


Malice

by rynling



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Alternating Perspectives, Contemporary AU, Dubious Wizard Mentor Ganondorf, Dystopian Hyrule, Eventual Smut, F/M, Illustrated, Mild Elements of Horror, Scientist Zelda, Slow Burn, Some Porn Mostly Plot, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2019-12-29 21:31:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 40,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18302306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rynling/pseuds/rynling
Summary: In an era dominated by Sheikah technology, Princess Zelda’s distant descendant is hospitalized and medicated to control her night terrors and banish the voices that sometimes speak into her ears. The suppression of powers that should exist only in myth weakens a seal placed on an ancient evil, and one night the young woman answers a knock at her door to find a monster of a man looming across the threshold, naked and wild and dripping with the liquefied malice that flooded her nightmares. The only thing he remembers is that his name was once Ganondorf, and both he and Zelda want answers.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This cover illustration is by the stylish and powerful [Vhyrel](https://twitter.com/vhyrel)!
> 
> I'm very honored to have received character illustrations from several incredible artists. The links below will take you directly to the chapters in which they appear.
> 
>  **Zelda** ([Chapter 6](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18302306/chapters/45303913)) by [Yutaan](https://yutaan.tumblr.com/)  
>  **Link** ([Chapter 8](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18302306/chapters/45745066)) by [Gloomyhome](https://twitter.com/gloomyhome)  
>  **Riju** ([Chapter 12](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18302306/chapters/47837683)) by [Sonia Stegemann](https://www.instagram.com/soniastegemann/)  
>  **Ganondorf** ([Chapter 17](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18302306/chapters/50478977)) by [Zikaualpha](https://twitter.com/zikaualpha)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which an ancient seal is broken and a terrible thing stirs violently awake.

There was darkness, and then a woman’s voice. The words were occluded, then clear.

_It’s time. Wake up!_

Her command was a bright beam of light, and suddenly the darkness was suffocating. His muscles convulsed. He began to scream, and foul liquid gushed into his mouth. He couldn’t breathe. He was drowning. He lashed out, and something tore away at his fingertips. He kept tearing until his hands were free, and then his face. He gulped down air and vomited putrescence. The world was shrouded in a blurry haze, and he had no understanding of what he saw.

Machines glowed with a soft blue luminescence in a dimness that was not quite dark. The light offended his eyes, and he hurled his many limbs at it until it was extinguished. He no longer needed to use his hands, which was as it should be. The floor was cold. His body was cold. He could smell himself, and he stank. He was hungry. _Ravenous_. He reached out again, and another set of lights was extinguished.

He attempted to raise himself from the floor. His legs would not support him, and he fell. He crawled forward on his front arms, which were slippery with the viscous slime that oozed from his skin. Shards of glass cut into the palms of his hands, and the sting of pain filled him with anger. His rage flared outward, surrounding him with crystalline explosions of glass and metal. In the distance, a door was ripped from its hinges.

He jerked his head toward the sound, and a hazy rectangle swam into his vision. Aside from the maddening pinpricks of light he hadn’t been able to extinguish, this was the only thing he could make out. There was something terribly wrong with his vision; he couldn’t see his hands in front of his face. His head felt unbearably heavy, as did his body. There was too much of him, and he barely had the strength to pull himself along the ground. He struggled forward, but the movement of his limbs was erratic. How many arms did he have? How many legs?

A piercing shard of glass dug between his ribs as he crawled forward, and a putrid smell assailed his nostrils as ichor spilled out of him in thick gobs. He was overwhelmed by disgust. His stomach lurched, and he vomited into the tangle of hair framing his face as the stinking pool of fluid spilling from his body spread. He didn’t know his name, and he couldn’t imagine his face, but he knew with an unyielding certainty that he was not supposed to be alive. He was meant to die; he was sure of it.

 _It’s okay_ , the woman’s voice whispered. _It’s going to be okay. You’re all right._

He let out a roar and sent his limbs flying. Some detached themselves from his body and landed in the far darkness with hideous squelching noises. He flexed his limbs again, and he was lighter. It was easier to move, so he rose from the ground. He stood, overbalanced, and fell back into his own filth.

The cursed voice that had woken him was responsible for his misery. He would end his existence, but first he would find this woman and make her feel every ounce of the pain and despair she had inflicted on him. He imagined the satisfaction of digging his fingers into her throat as her hateful voice screamed in fear. In his mind he reached one of his arms into her chest and tore out her hideously beating heart, her eyes trapped within his own as their light flickered out. The ceramic coating affixed to his face cracked as the broken jaw beneath it twisted his bloody lips into a horrifying caricature of a smile.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a sleeper rises from a dream of ill omen.

She was standing in water as thick and lightless as oil, and it was rising. The water was freezing cold, and it rose past her chest, past her shoulders, past her chin. She couldn’t move, not even to thrust her mouth above the waves. When the tarry liquid entered her nostrils, all she could do was choke, feeling that somewhere, someone hated her without reason or mercy.

 _It’s time._ A voice as warm as a summer day cut softly through the dark water. _Wake up!_

Zelda gasped as her alarm shattered the reality of her nightmare, but the slimy residue of the otherworldly fury that had tried to drown her lingered on her skin. It wasn’t real, of course, but her heart was racing, and her face and hands were clammy with sweat. She’d suffered from frightening dreams her entire life. By all rights she should be used to them, but she could never shake the feeling that they were conveying some sort of message. Her nightmares felt _real_ ; they were far more substantial than normal dreams, and they were always accompanied by the certainty that there was something she had forgotten and desperately needed to remember.

 _One day_ , she kept telling herself. One day she would lie awake in bed and listen closely for the voice that was trying to speak to her through her nightmares. That was the other reason she was never able to dismiss her dreams – she felt as if someone were trying to communicate with her, someone who had no words and was forced to use images and sensations instead. Even through the terror and the pain, there was always the sense of a strong will. In the water, freezing and filled with malice, something had been telling her to _move_ , to gather her strength and save herself. But she couldn’t. She hadn’t yet found the means to free herself from her paralysis, and the vague consciousness intruding into her dreams was too alien.

The alarm on her phone went off again, and Zelda swiped the screen to silence it. She sat up in bed and tried to gain control of her breathing, but she was struck with anxiety. She couldn’t shake the premonition that something horrible was going to happen, not in the indefinite future or later today but _right now_.

“It’s okay,” Zelda whispered. “It’s going to be okay. You’re all right. Just take it easy. Everything’s going to be fine. It’s okay. You’re fine.”

These platitudes meant nothing, but the act of saying them out loud helped her to feel calmer. If nothing else, the awful pressure on her mind receded enough for her to be able to toss away the covers and put her feet on the floor. Zelda turned on the small lamp beside her bed. The light burned her eyes, and she hated it. She felt an urge to pick up the lamp and smash it against the floor. She actually reached out for it before catching herself and withdrawing her hand.

“That’s new,” Zelda muttered. She stopped taking her medication when she moved into her own apartment a few weeks ago, and she was still encountering new sensations with each passing day. She had a document on her laptop that she used to catalog her mental state, and she was starting to look forward to updating it every evening. “Today I discovered that I enjoy spicy food,” she would write, or “I love the color blue.” She would also try to describe her dreams when she remembered them, but she didn’t know what she would say about the one she had just woken from. _With any luck_ , she thought, _maybe I’ll forget it_ , knowing that she wouldn’t. She never forgot her nightmares. She remembered every single one of them with hideous clarity, beginning with the one that had gotten her into so much trouble as a child.

In any case, she had to get up. She would be late to work if she didn’t hurry, so she would have to make her shower quick.

“You’re okay,” she assured herself. “You’re doing just fine.”

Unfortunately, however, she wasn’t fine. She was, in fact, broke and unhappy. She loved that this apartment was hers, but that was the only good thing about it. It was small and uncomfortable and far away from her job, which she also hated. When she was younger, she envisioned herself doing great things, not spending an hour on a crowded train so that she could inject chemicals into small animals and enter data into an endless spreadsheet. She wanted her life to mean something. A steady procession of doctors told her that she was too weak to handle stress, but she didn’t feel that way at all. She occasionally felt helpless and frightened, but she had never, not once in her life, felt weak.

And so she had run away to face whatever destiny she could create on her own. Perhaps one day she would realize what that destiny was. In the meantime, she had to pay the rent.

“Come on, you can do this,” she told herself. “Just one step at a time. You’re going to get there, I know it. You’ll figure out where you need to go. Just keep going.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a monstrosity makes a steady creeping progress toward the object of his desire.

_Come on, you can do this_ , the woman’s voice said. _Just one step at a time. You’re going to get there, I know it. You’ll figure out where you need to go. Just keep going._

He hated the voice. He hated its inane drivel, and he hated the foolish woman it belonged to. He would kill her, and he would sleep again. Forever, if the gods had any mercy. But first he had to silence the voice that shone like a piercing beam of light in the comforting darkness of his mind.

The building where he woke stank of negligence and the dusty musk of forgotten things, and he was assaulted by the acrid reek of his own fluids coagulating in the enclosed space. He had no patience for the maze of corridors that branched from the room that contained him, so he destroyed everything that stood in his path.

The outside air was humid and suffused with the odor of rot. The night sky was polluted with artificial light, and this offended him even more than the sour smell. He reached out with his multitude of hands and broke as many of the lights as he could reach. His body was stronger now, and he was not bothered by the sting of the shards of glass raining down on him.

His vision returned in slow stages as his body shed its limbs. The ceramic mask that covered the sensitive skin of his face developed deep cracks and began to fall away, but this didn’t bother him, nor did the black oil leaking from his body in a slick trail. He was consumed by a terrible hunger, but everything he saw through the haze of his glassy eyes made him sick. There were wires everywhere, wires and towers and pavement pitted with gaping holes. He could feel the earth groaning, and he too began to groan in a tuneless echo. Before he slept, he would purify this filth with fire. First, however, he would deal with the woman intruding into his mind.

Every time she spoke, he grabbed onto her voice and pulled himself through the darkness between worlds, phasing through space in messy jumps. He discarded extraneous parts of himself with each leap through the freezing void. It hurt, and the pain was disorienting. He couldn’t track his location as the city shifted around him, nor could he track how his body shifted with it. He dismembered and reconstructed himself by instinct, the same instinct that compelled him to hone in on the voice in his head.

He would have been lost without the woman’s words; nothing he saw or smelled made sense to him. The only thing he knew was that he was in a city. He must have lived in this city before, for he recognized its contours, but he recoiled at this place, which had polluted itself with its own decay. This city was a corpse, and the people who lived here must be insects.

Yes, here was a swarm of insects, huddling around a fire in a metal can, covered in tattered layers of clothing too warm for the climate, dragging trash behind them like intestines. Even in the light of the fire, their eyes were dead, but they still screamed when they saw him.

_It’s not so bad. Keep going!_

The woman spoke again in his mind, and he shifted closer to her, folding space around himself like a cloak.

He emerged in a pitiful cage of tamed nature that resembled a park, but what a pitiful park it was, with rubbish floating in pools of stagnant water. A boy too young to be out past nightfall cried as a man pawed at him from behind. The boy saw the shadows bend around the jagged contours of his body as he materialized, and he began shrieking. The man paid no attention to either of them.

The woman spoke again, and he shifted underground, where the wind howled through tunnels dripping with dirty water. An electric current jolted into his body through a thick strip of metal embedded into the moist ground. He roared as he uprooted it and shredded the wires feeding its current. The tunnel’s ceiling shuddered with his passage and began to collapse in his wake.

The woman spoke again, and he shifted back into the open air. Now he was in a plaza paved with marble slabs radiating from a hateful statue that memorialized a foolish child beating a horse slavering with fear. The indignity of the statue was an affront, so he toppled it with the unbalanced bulk of his body, finding satisfaction in the tremors of its fall.

He was getting closer to the voice; he could feel it. As disgusted as he was by everything he saw in this wretched city, he hated the woman’s incessant pablum even more. What a pleasure it would be to silence her.

 _Nothing is going to get in your way_ , she said. _You will find what you’re looking for._

 _Oh yes_ , he thought in the horrible buzzing chaos that had once been his mind. _I will._


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the visitor Zelda has dreaded for her entire life for finally arrives.

Zelda balanced uncomfortably on her toes as she used a pin to secure the stray strands of hair that threatened to fall over her forehead. Her bathroom mirror was warped and stained, and she had to position herself in exactly the right way to be able to see what she was doing. It had taken her hours of scrubbing to clean the windowless room after she’d moved in, but she’d come to the conclusion that the mirror was beyond saving. The glare from a single overhead light bulb screwed into the ceiling didn’t help.

She’d already had to cut her shower short so she wouldn’t be late, and she was on the verge of giving up on her hair. She could always pull it into a ponytail for the time being and redo it at one of the bathrooms at work. She hated to leave even simple tasks unfinished, however, and the thought of looking sloppy on the subway didn’t sit well with her. She would just use one more hairpin, and –

Zelda reached down, still attempting to hold her hair in place with one hand, and something about the way her body twisted triggered a wave of nausea. Her hand twitched, knocking the hairpin off the narrow rim of the sink.

Zelda looked down at the floor, and her stomach lurched again. She couldn’t see the hairpin in the darkness of the shadows thrown by the harsh light. Straining her eyes gave her a headache, and now she felt frustrated as well as sick. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to cry. This was exactly like the withdrawal she’d had to endure when she stopped taking her medication. Those first two weeks were awful. She thought she’d made it through, but here she was again. She wanted to crawl back into bed, but there was no way she could take time off work. This was her first real job, and she needed to keep it. Maybe her anxiety was making her ill, but she refused to let that stop her.

 _Nothing is going to get in your way_ , she told herself. _You will find what you’re looking for._

The glint of her hairpin caught her eye. She bent down, scooped it up, and blew off the dust before adjusting it to make sure her bangs stayed in place. It was going to be a long day, and the last thing she needed to worry about was her appearance. She was still new in the lab, and people judged her for the smallest and most innocent mistakes. Making sure she at least looked like a professional sometimes felt like the only defense she had.

 _As long as nothing else goes wrong, I should be good to go_ , Zelda assured herself as she assessed her reflection. _Nothing bad is going to happen today. Dreams are just dreams._

She was about to turn off the bathroom light when another wave of nausea hit. It was followed by an intense sensation of vertigo, as if the earth had suddenly disappeared from under her feet. She reached out to stabilize herself, but there was nothing to grab onto. She was going to fall; and, once she did, she would never stop falling.

 _I must still be dreaming_ , she thought. She tried to focus on her breathing and anchor herself to her surroundings, but her concentration only made her more aware of how strange everything had become. There was an intense pressure in the air just like the atmosphere before a late summer thunderstorm. She could hear an unpleasant humming pitched almost too low to perceive, and she thought she could see bright crimson sparks rising from the floor.

She closed her eyes, trying to block everything out, but then a booming sound echoed through her apartment. It was so loud that she could feel the vibration through the soles of her feet. She had never experienced a hallucination like that before, so it must be real. Perhaps someone’s car engine had misfired on the street outside.

Zelda shook her head and returned to herself, waiting as she felt the floor become solid once again. She breathed in through her nose and exhaled through her mouth as her disorientation faded. She opened her eyes, and there was no longer a red glow in the bathroom of her small apartment. The humming had disappeared as well, and the only thing she could hear was the slow drip of water from the shower head. Had she just imaged the earlier sound, or...?

There was another crash, louder this time. Zelda flinched. There was no mistaking it; someone must be at the door.

Zelda was filled with dread. Her heart hammered in her chest, and it was difficult to breathe. She’d had panic attacks before, but they were always caused by her dreams and hallucinations, not anything in reality. She considered going to the door like a normal person, like a person who didn’t have visions or nightmares, but she hesitated. No normal person was capable of making such a sound, not unless they were trying to tear her door down with some sort of machine. Something was obviously wrong. Maybe she could pretend that she had already left for work. That was reasonable, right? Come to think of it, she actually was already dressed, so there was nothing stopping her from grabbing her shoes and bag and leaving her apartment through the fire escape…

But no. Whatever was happening, this was real, and she had to deal with it.

The door burst open just as she turned to face it, and she threw up her arm to shield her eyes as splinters of wood flew toward her.

She braced herself and looked up. There was an enormous man on the other side of the threshold, easily as tall as the doorway itself. He opened his mouth, and a broken buzzing sound like static emerged. He might have been saying words, but he wasn’t speaking in a language she understood. His hair and bear were matted with a thick slime. His entire body was covered in tarry ooze, and he stank like a broken-down truck leaking oil onto hot asphalt.

The man barged into her apartment, still emitting a horrible noise that had started to sound oddly like speech. She forced herself to stop looking at him, hoping that there was something nearby that she could use as a weapon. As she dropped her eyes, she couldn’t help but notice that he was very naked.

For some reason this struck her as unbearably funny.

This was it? This was the calamity she had been having nightmares about for so many years? He was awful, certainly, but she had dealt with worse. This was just a man, and he _really_ needed to put on some clothes. As she looking into the face of a hulking wreck of a creature that was barely human, she was surprised to find that her most pressing concern was whether or not she owned anything big enough to fit him.

 _I could wrap him in comforter_ , she thought, letting out a manic giggle as she imagined him wearing her bed sheets as a robe. The look of confusion on his face as he watched her reaction her was so comical that she couldn’t help breaking out into laughter.

_Oh Hylia, this is it. My nightmares finally came true, and I’m going to die laughing._

The man made no attempt to attack her, however. He had fallen silent, and he seemed to be waiting for her to make the next move. Zelda had no idea how to handle such a surreal situation. In her dreams she was always threatened by billowing dark clouds or rampaging whirlwinds or endless conflagrations or towering tidal waves, not a dirty naked man who looked like he slept in a garbage bin and didn’t even have the sense not to walk around with his dick out. She was terrified of what he might do to her, but she also felt a bit sorry for him.

“All right, then,” Zelda said, rolling up her sleeves as she made a decision. “If you’ve come to kill me, I guess I can’t stop you, but first you need to take a shower.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a cursed name is spoken.

She was not what he expected. He had expected a priestess, a warrior, a queen.

She was dressed like a peasant, and the room behind her was a hovel. His first impression was that she was pathetic. His second, immediately following his first, was that she was powerful beyond measure.

He spoke to her with all of his voices, telling her exactly what he intended to do to her. Her last moments would be slow and painful, and she would scream. Oh, how she would scream. He would force her to watch as he dismembered her, wringing out every drop of satisfaction from her misery. He would kill anyone who attempted to save her, and she would envy the swiftness of their deaths.

She looked at his rage and laughed.

Of course she would laugh. She had strength enough to laugh at him. He could tell just by looking at her that her power was great, perhaps even as great as his own. He forgot himself and stared at her in wonder. Looking at her made him feel different, somehow. More like himself. He was on the verge of remembering something when she spoke. He couldn’t understand her words, but he _knew_ her, and perhaps she knew him as well. His earlier desire to rip into her flesh and tear her voice from her throat seemed like a dream from which he was just beginning to wake. If only he could remember…

The woman laughed again and reached for him. He could have snapped her slender arm between his hands and shattered her bones into splinters, but the compulsion to do so was small and insignificant in the light of his fascination. He remained still and watched as her hand moved tentatively closer. He understood that he would feel something when her fingers touched his skin, but he wasn’t prepared for the ferocity of the sensation.

Her touch burned him like ice – _When have I felt ice?_ – and he reacted on instinct, roaring and swinging his fist to bat her away.

She dodged the blow with ease and flowed away from him like water before clutching her hand to her chest as her face twisted with pain. _Good_ , he thought, his hatred coalescing into words. _I hurt her_.

She spoke again as she regarded him with a level glare. Her speech still held no meaning for him, but the irritation in her tone was clear. She saw him as a problem to be solved. Whatever he was, she was going to fix him. The urge to kill her returned, rising in his throat like bile.

 _I will rip every tooth from your cursed mouth and tear out your tongue once you can no longer scream_ , he assured her as he took a step forward.

She turned her back to him and began rooting through a pile of rubbish on a raised platform behind her. Her refusal to acknowledge him filled him with rage. He approached her and almost stumbled as his thigh bumped against the sharp edge of a frame covered in a shoddy pile of fabric.

I _will pluck out your eye, but only one, and I will hold back your air with my hands until you are forced to swallow your own sight. You will choke on your own vomit as you beg me to end your miserable life._

She removed a small metal rod capped with a bundle of shiny black fabric from the jumbled mess of objects and pressed a button at its base to extend it. She pointed it at him and then pointed deeper into the room, indicating where she wanted him to move. She apparently wanted him to go into an even smaller room. He could smell the acrid reek of chemicals from where he stood.

 _Do not issue orders to me_. He attempted to speak in only one voice but failed, and his words emerged in a cacophony. She regarded him with a blank stare, and it dawned on him that she couldn’t understand what he was saying. There was no point in attempting to communicate with her, then. This realization filled him with a profound sense of exhaustion. He considered killing her quickly so that he could dig himself deep into the earth and return to sleep, but his pride forbade him from attacking her if she displayed no sign of aggression toward him.

She said something in her strange language and turned her back on him again. He watched as she walked to the other side of the room and slid a large panel of glass open along metal rails. A fresh breeze blew into the stagnant room, bringing with it the clean smell of green earth. He followed the woman to the window, and she slipped away from him as he approached, talking all the while. He couldn’t understand her language, but he could perceive her thoughts if he concentrated on her voice. His ability to hear her was fading, but he could still pick out bright flashes of meaning in the stream of her words.

_You’re covered in scars, what in Nayru’s name happened to you to make you look like that, I hope you’re not too big to fit in my shower, we’ve got to get you cleaned up, how should I –_

The irony of the situation was bitter; he came to kill her, but she meant to bathe him. Now that his senses had been refreshed by the outside air, he could smell water. The woman must have been trying to get him to enter a washroom. He became painfully aware of his own odor, and it occurred to him that he would like to be washed.

She poked him with the soft end of the metal rod, and he allowed her to shepherd him into a tiled room. He recoiled at how confining it was, but the wretched woman poked him again, urging him to step into a large enamel basin. He hissed at her but did as she asked, only barely tolerating the underlying stench of mildew and ammonia. Everything about this room was pathetic; it was fit only for an animal. The woman drew close to him. He considered striking her for her impudence but desisted. He watched as she adjusted a series of knobs, which caused a sudden burst of water to rain down on him. It was scalding hot and wonderful.

The woman continued speaking in a soft murmur, and he understood that she was attempting to calm him as a soldier would talk to a horse to comfort it in its confusion. _When have I ridden a horse?_ He pushed the thought away and allowed himself to be soothed by the warmth of the water and the hum of her voice.

She reached past him to remove a sponge from a hook on the wall and soaped it with a liquid that smelled of lye mixed with a cheap perfume. He wanted to demand that she take it away from him, but she started scrubbing him before he could open his mouth. She began with his right arm before moving to his left. She was careful not to touch his skin or expose herself to the stream of water, but she was unable to prevent the front of her shirt from getting wet.

He began to have thoughts that were alien to him. The fabric of her shirt was thin and poorly woven. The cut of the tailoring didn’t fit her, and the shade of white didn’t suit her skin at all. Who was responsible for dressing this woman? He watched as the peaks of her breasts stiffened from the friction of the wet fabric as she scrubbed his chest in brisk circles, chafing at his own nipples. He felt himself start to react as his cock began to stiffen.

Suddenly he could see himself as she must see him, a man so covered in filth and slime that she didn’t think to acknowledge his nakedness. She didn’t see him as a man, and he hated her for that.

 _Get out_ , he muttered, too disgusted by the situation to raise his voice. She apparently picked up the danger in his tone, for she stopped washing him and glanced up at his face with wide eyes.

She spoke to him in a small voice, and he had to summon the full force of his concentration to be able to understand what she was saying: _Who are you?_

 _I don’t know_ , he wanted to answer, but then, as he gazed into her eyes in an attempt to read her thoughts, he did know.

 _Ganondorf_.

As soon as he spoke the word, the world came crashing down around him. All the people he was and could have been collapsed into his body like the solid weight of gravity. He still had no memories, but suddenly he was inexorably himself.

 _Get out_ , he said again, making a hand gesture to shoo her away. For the first time she looked at him with fear. He scowled at her, and she flinched.

What did she think he was going to do? He could have killed her at any point, but it was only when he no longer intended to hurt her that started to be afraid of him. Foolish woman. She was emitting so much magical energy that she was practically shining, but she didn’t seem to be aware of it in the slightest. The raw force of his rage had deserted him as soon as him name returned to him, and she could have killed him then and there had she wished to do so. The terror in her eyes was so ridiculous that it was offensive. At least she would leave him in peace.

Ganondorf watched her walk away and began the long task of cleaning himself.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Zelda attempts to rationalize the absurd.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ilustration is by the amazing [Yutaan on Tumblr](https://yutaan.tumblr.com/)!

_Fuck_ , Zelda cursed under her breath as she checked the time on her phone. She was going to be late, and her train would probably be so crowded that she’d have to stand the whole way to work.

“Hylia _please_ don’t let me lose this job,” she murmured to herself, picking up her pace. She stumbled as her bootheel caught a raised corner of the sidewalk, and she came down awkwardly on her ankle in the middle of the intersection.

The damp spots on her clothes clung uncomfortably to her skin, and she was beginning to perspire. To make matters worse, it was probably going to rain soon. She should have changed, but she couldn’t stand to spend another second alone in her apartment with that _thing_. It was clearly a hallucination, but the way it had gone from making inarticulate machine noises to speaking to her in some sort of foreign language creeped her out. Its eyes, which had been glowing white sockets when it broke down her door, had been replaced by human eyes at some point. But could such an awful creature be human? It didn’t seem to be fully organic, for one thing, and its physical form visibly shifted each time she looked at it. Its face had been brutal and horrific, as if it had been beaten and broken and then reshaped by someone who had never seen an actual person.

And yet it – _he_ , she corrected herself, for the monster had been undeniably male – had the gall to kick her out of her own bathroom. If he spoke like a human, she reasoned, she might as well treat him like one. Zelda wished the first person to visit her apartment hadn’t been a failed science experiment with a nasty mat of overgrown hair hanging down to his bare ass, but he was her guest, even if she was almost completely certain that he wasn’t real.

What would someone like that even want with her, anyway? She filled her electric kettle and dumped everything on the table onto the couch while she waited for the water to boil. When the timer clicked off, she poured the hot water over two bags of black tea in a clear glass pot, one of the few nice things she had in her apartment. As the tea steeped, she busied herself collecting various items the man might need when he got out of the shower: an extra towel, a pair of scissors, a hairbrush, a couple of hairbands, and her electric shaver. It was debatable whether he would even know what an electric shaver was, but it wasn’t her fault if he hurt himself because he didn’t understand basic hygiene.

The tea had steeped long enough, so she removed the bags from the pot and set it on the table next to an empty ceramic mug. She didn’t know what this man ate – probably rocks, judging by the state of his teeth – but he would more than likely be hungry after a hard night terrorizing the city, or whatever it was he was doing before he ended up on her doorstep. She put two slices of bread in the toaster and hurried to her bedroom. _I hope he doesn’t try to come in here_ , she thought, wishing the door to the room had a lock.

In the bottom drawer of her mostly empty dresser was a set of clothing she had accidentally ordered in the wrong size: a black tracksuit, a white t-shirt, and a pair of running shorts. It had taken her a while to set up an account on Beedlenet, so she’d had to use Malo Mart Online, which didn’t require a credit card. It was the first time she’d ordered clothing from the internet. She was too overwhelmed by the site’s interface to remember to select her size, so everything came in XXXL. Returning it was too much of a hassle, and throwing away new clothing felt like a waste, so she kept it.

 _You never know_ , Zelda told herself. This was remarkably apt, as it turned out. Who could have known that a seven-foot-tall monster of a man would turn up at her apartment? Even she didn’t expect her nightmares to turn out to be quite so literal. She set the pile of folded clothing on the table next to the extra towel and returned to the kitchen. She put the toast on a plate, drizzled it with honey, and left it next to the tea.

Zelda could still hear the sound of the shower from the other side of the bathroom door, but she was running late and didn’t have time to wait for the man to come out and start spitting nonsense words at her. “Ganondorf,” he called himself. She vaguely remembered hearing the name before, if it even was a name, but she couldn’t remember where. Not that it mattered; none of this was real, and she had to get to work.

Zelda paused on the other side of the intersection and stretched her sore ankle to make sure it wasn’t sprained. This made her to miss the next light, which she found supremely irritating. Her first instinct was to blame Ganondorf, which irritated her even more. “What in Din’s name is wrong with me,” she muttered, causing the person standing next to her on the sidewalk to give her a look and cross to the other side of the street.

 _Whatever, fuck it_ , she thought. She took a step forward, fully intending to jaywalk, but she stopped when she saw a Sheikah patrol car turn the corner. This was the third one she’d spotted in as many blocks. Was it just her, or were there a lot of them out this morning?

She made it to the station just in time to catch the next train after the one she usually took. All the seats were taken, just as she’d feared, and she had to stand. The ride was too bumpy for her to read anything on her phone while keeping her balance, so she was stuck with only her own thoughts to entertain her.

An onslaught of worries struck her almost immediately. She’d forgotten to close the window before she left, for one thing. And she’d left her laptop on the couch, for another. She’d managed to shut her front door after her, but the lock was busted, so there was nothing keeping anyone out of the apartment who wanted to walk in. Well, nothing except the crazy person who’d occupied her shower. Was he homeless? He had to be homeless. Or maybe he’d escaped from prison. She’d left a homeless convict alone in her apartment with almost everything she owned so she could get to work on time, which wasn’t the smartest thing she’d ever done in her life.

But no, he was a hallucination, he had to be. It was easy enough to tell herself that a homeless person had broken into her apartment, but Zelda knew that wasn’t what happened. He wasn’t anything you could call a _person_ , at least not at first. He was too big, and he had too many appendages, each of which was twisted and misshapen in its own unique and disturbing way. His musculature made no sense, and he kept _shifting_ every time she looked away from him. His body was covered in wounds so deep that he shouldn’t have been able to stand, much less break down her door. His skin was coated with some sort of oozing liquid that looked like the globs of creosote the city used to waterproof utility poles in the fall, and he smelled like subway tracks that had caught on fire. He produced grating metallic sounds from a mouth filled with wreckage, and his face was a swamp of pulpy flesh partially covered by an oddly textured ceramic mask. He was a walking nightmare only vaguely shaped like a human. In fact, he was so monstrous that she had trouble taking him seriously.

She had expected worse, to be honest. To be even more honest, he was kind of silly looking.

It was only when he spoke to her in the shower that she felt fear. Somewhere inside of all of that horror, there was an actual human being. What sort of unspeakable acts had been performed on him? And why did he come to her, of all people?

The worst aspect of the encounter, the thing she forcibly pushed out of her mind as she set out food and prepared to leave, was that hearing him speak to her had given her a powerful sense of déjà vu. She recognized his voice. It felt familiar to her, somehow.

And when she tried to touch him… No, it was best not to think of that, not right now.

The more time she spent on the train surrounded by real people engaging with the real world on their phones, the easier it was for Zelda to reassure herself that this had all been a hallucination. After all, if she was just seeing things, then Ganondorf (or whoever he was) would surely be gone when she got home.

This conclusion didn’t sit well with her, however. Zelda had always been told that she was mentally ill, and she hated it. She wasn’t “normal,” that much was certain, but she wasn’t sick. As much as she didn’t need any monsters in her life at the moment, a part of her wanted Ganondorf to be real, if only because that meant she was real as well.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ganondorf puts himself in order and begins to catch flashes of distant memories.

He didn’t feel clean. He felt like he’d never been clean in his life and would never be clean again, but he didn’t want to be in the tiny washroom anymore. He didn’t want to deal with the woman either, so he waited until he heard her leave before he turned off the water.

To his surprise, Ganondorf found that she’d had the good grace to leave behind a towel and some tea. The tea was still too hot to drink, so he knotted the towel around his waist and returned to the washroom with the pair of scissors she’d placed next to the towel. If nothing else, the woman knew how to make a statement, and he had to admit that something _did_ need to be done about his hair. The mirror hanging on the wall was too warped for him to see himself clearly, but he did his best to put up his hair with an elastic band and cut his beard.

The thick humidity lingering in the air of the small room loosened the last traces of the ceramic mask clinging to his face. He scratched them away, and the shards crumbled under his fingers like ash.

He attempted to make use of the razor, which was apparently powered by electricity, but it short-circuited when he tried to charge it with his own energy. The voltage must have been too strong; he’d need to learn to regulate that. He summoned a small knife into his hand and used it to shave. He still had trouble controlling his arms and nicked himself a few times, but his body was healing as rapidly as he could damage it.

The small tiled room was a disaster when he finished. He considered leaving the mess on the floor out of sheer spite, but it would probably be more trouble than it was worth to have so much hair and slime lying about. He used magic to clean it and then took care of the broken door and tarry black footprints as he dressed himself. The clothing the woman laid out for him was as cheap and tasteless as the outfit she’d been wearing. He had every intention of leaving before she returned and never seeing her again, but he hoped someone would do her a favor and buy her some decent clothes at some point in the near future.

Steam had stopped rising from the pot of tea, so Ganondorf poured himself a cup and walked to the large window, which also served as a door opening onto a small patch of grass fringed with hydrangea bushes that hadn’t yet bloomed. It was as humid outside as it was inside, and it smelled like a storm was coming.

He stepped out onto a small concrete veranda and took a sip of tea. His stomach lurched so violently in response that he fell to his knees. He dropped the mug, and the sound of it breaking was the last thing he heard before he vomited.

It seemed to go on forever. What emerged from inside his body was vile, and it scorched the grass it landed on, leaving only bare earth and a slurry of pitch-black putrescence that began to evaporate into a poisonous-smelling vapor as soon as it came into contact with the air.

He couldn’t bear to look at it or even to touch it with his magic, so he went back inside and slid the window shut behind him. At least it would rain soon.

With the window closed, the odors inside the room were stronger, and he could smell toasted bread and honey. He was suddenly ravenous. He ate what the woman had put out for him, barely chewing it. He went into her kitchen when he finished. It didn’t take him long to find the icebox. He pried it open and marveled at the chilly air that blasted into his face. It was a wonderful device, a wonder of engineering, and it was wasted in this hovel. It was also practically empty.

He consumed everything he found, eggs and fruit and vegetables. He devoured everything as it was, fresh and raw and oily and bitter, and he could feel his teeth and face and skin healing as he ate.

Once his hunger was dealt with, he rinsed a dirty mug that the woman had left on the counter and poured himself another cup of tea. He still had no memory of who he was or how he got here, but he refused to let this bother him. He could worry about it later, once he was able to leave the claustrophobic space of this woman’s living quarters.

His mind had begun rearranging itself, and the layout of the room made more sense to him now. The raised platform was a table. The metal rod the woman poked him with was an umbrella. The tall window was a sliding door. The pile of fabric he had almost tripped over was a couch, and he wanted nothing as much as he wanted to sit down.

He swept the jumble of objects littering the cushions onto the floor. Something that looked like a book with a burnished metal cover caught his attention. It emitted light when he opened it, and he studied it as he drank his tea.

Judging by the keys set into the interior of one of the metal covers, it was probably meant to be held with its spine positioned horizontally. He balanced the device on his thighs and angled it so that the glowing screen was facing him. The small keys set into the interior of the lower cover were marked with characters. Although their shapes were slightly different than the letters he knew, he could still read them. The machine was more than likely intended for text entry, then. Perhaps this was something like a diary. The glowing screen was occupied by a single box, within which five short dashes blinked on and off. It must be requesting a password. As Ganondorf stared at the screen, he realized what the password had to be.

Zelda. He knew it as surely as he had known his own name.

Z-E-L-D-A, he typed, picking out each individual letter with one finger. The screen flashed and changed, but he had no understanding of what he had been granted access to. Although he recognized the letters, none of the words on the screen meant anything to him.

Ganondorf frowned and snapped the cover of the metal book closed. He set it down beside him and leaned back as he drained the rest of the tea from the mug. How had he known the woman’s name? Did he know her? She seemed to recognize him, or at least it had seemed that way, if only for a moment. If she knew him, however, why did she ask him for his name? On the other hand, if she didn’t know him, why didn’t she try to fight him? All he knew was that he had been sleeping, and she had woken him up. She summoned him to her, somehow. But where had he come from? Where was he now?

He stood up and walked to the bookshelf set against the wall by the kitchen. Like the rest of the room, it was mostly empty, with its shelves occupied by nothing more than a dozen small books and a pile of unfamiliar coins. He picked up one of the books, and –

_He was in a beautifully furnished room with a stone floor. A long bookcase stretched along the wall in front of him. There must be hundreds of books here, and they all looked well read. A strange twilight fell through the high windows and illuminated the gold and silver letters embedded on the spines, which glowed with a soft radiance._

– he opened the cover and flipped to a random page, shaking his head to clear the vision away. Although the script was as oddly shaped as the letters on the metal keys, he recognized several words. Despite his best efforts, however, the overall meaning was lost on him. He suppressed the frustrated urge to rip the book in half. As he closed it, a scrap of paper fell from between its pages, and he caught it as it drifted down. Someone had scrawled a random series of numbers on the paper in thin blue ink. This meant nothing to him, but underneath the numbers was a name he had no trouble reading: Link.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Zelda doesn’t yet trust herself enough to confide her worries to Link.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's Link, drawn by [@gloomyhome](https://twitter.com/gloomyhome) on Twitter!

Zelda always knew she wanted to be a scientist. She enjoyed cleaning and laying out a neat array of tools and instruments, and she enjoyed the rigorous precision of ensuring that all variables were controlled during an experiment. The process of adjusting different elements little by little in order to observe changes filled her with a sense of satisfaction, as if she were honing in on an absolute truth that no one could dispute. The slow formation of a web of data form across multiple trials was a beautiful sight to behold. Zelda even enjoyed comparing her conclusions with those contained in other reports, searching for discrepancies and connections in the details. She excelled at discovering explanations in unlikely places and reading the stories hidden between the lines as she found holes to be filled and weaknesses to be addressed.

Her work at university had been praised, and she had managed to find a position even with her unusual circumstances – being a bit older than other college graduates, for instance, and having no prior employment history. Zelda understood that everyone had to start somewhere, and she didn’t expect special treatment. Still, she was quickly becoming disenchanted with her job as a lab technician. All day she sat in front of a computer monitor and copied the results of handwritten reports into digital files. It was important to process this data, of course, and the numbers wouldn’t enter themselves into a spreadsheet, but this wasn’t what she wanted to do with her life.

She didn’t enjoy spending nine hours a day in a windowless lab, and she didn’t imagine the animals used in the tests she recorded enjoyed it either. She’d started to notice a streak of cruelty in the other researchers in her division, who treated the subjects as disposable objects. And why shouldn’t they? Zelda hadn’t yet been allowed to participate in any clinical trials herself, but she was the one who ran the numbers. She knew exactly how much the life of individual animal was worth: almost nothing. Whether it was a mouse or a chuchu, it cost more to keep it alive than it did to kill it and order another one. Based on what she’d seen, Zelda suspected that the death of these animals was built into the structure of the trials. Why were the experiments designed like this? It wasn’t making anyone happy, and it was completely unnecessary.

Zelda disliked academia and had no interest in continuing on to grad school, but she was starting to regret her decision to enter a corporate lab. Not that she had much choice in the matter, unfortunately. If she wanted to get away from her father’s family, she needed money, and it wasn’t as if she could just smash pots for rupees. All things considered, it was better to be the person managing the experiment data than the person being experimented on.

Maybe it was because she’d had a monster invading her apartment instead of her usual cup of morning coffee, but Zelda felt more on edge than usual. She didn’t hear Link enter the office, and she almost shrieked when he greeted her.

Link grinned, amused by her reaction. “It’s just a package. It doesn’t bite. But I’ll check, just to be safe,” he assured her, shaking a small padded envelope. “By the sound of it, I’m going to say it’s a book.”

Link worked as a courier for Beedlenet. As the lowest person in the lab’s pecking order, it was Zelda’s job to sign for the daily deliveries and take them to the mail room. She had no interest in speaking to people she didn’t know, but it was impossible to be chilly to Link, who was by far the most charming person she’d ever met. He also had the most symmetrical face she’d ever seen, and he was almost impossibly attractive, if a bit short. Out of curiosity, Zelda had run a Navi search on him, thinking that perhaps he was an aspiring actor or musician, and it took her no time at all to find that he was a minor celebrity on Skyloft, where he posted daily pictures of himself being fit and athletic. Zelda didn’t understand why someone like Link would bother to be friendly to her, but she felt comfortable around him.

“Thank you for your service, hero,” she said, extending her hand for the package. “I appreciate the special attention, but what did you do with the rest of the deliveries?”

“Already dropped them off in the mail room. Somebody left the door open, so I thought I’d save you the trouble of wheeling the cart down the hall. It’s probably a good thing I did, because you look like shit. Are you okay? I have some moisturizer if you want to borrow it.”

“Well excuse me, princess.” Zelda rolled her eyes. “But no, I’m fine. It’s just been a long day.”

“It’s not even noon yet. Are you sure you don’t want some moisturizer?”

“Maybe I do, actually. If you’re offering.”

“No problem.” Link snapped open his shoulder bag and removed a small tube of what looked like very expensive facial cream. Zelda didn’t recognize the brand.

“People are always giving me things. I might be developing a bit of a hoarding problem, but I’m not complaining. I should probably return the favor by promoting their products or something.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. I think they just like your face.”

“Of course they do, and I – ”

Link was interrupted by his ringtone, which was set at a surprisingly high volume. He frowned and checked his phone before silencing it and slipping it back into his bag.

“You know what, it’s been a long day for me too,” he admitted, brushing his bangs out of his eyes. “I’ve gotten several calls this morning from an unlisted number that doesn’t leave a message or text me. It’s weird. It’s not like my contact info is public, you know? You’re actually the only person I’ve given my number to recently. Not that you ever call. You should pick up your phone and come out someone.”

Zelda ignored his comment. The last thing she needed was to go out drinking with strangers, especially since she didn’t have much money. After what she’d seen this morning, though, she could use a drink. She decided to text Riju after lunch, but she didn’t know Link well enough to invite him. Perhaps one day, but not today. She changed the subject.

“Maybe you have a stalker.”

“If only. I _wish_ I had a stalker. Preferably a handsome one. But I’m just _too_ beautiful. It drives people away. I do my best to put myself out there, but it’s not like anyone is breaking down my door.”

At the mention of breaking down doors, Zelda suddenly recalled the grotesque face of the man who had barged into her apartment. Had he been wearing some sort of mask, or was that his actual skin? Had she really tried to give him a bath? In her own shower? How had she not run away screaming?

“Zelda?” Link looked at her with concern. “Are you okay?”

Zelda considered telling Link about her encounter earlier that morning, but she didn’t know how to explain it, or whether she should even try. She hadn’t had many friends in school, or rather, she wasn’t allowed to have friends in school. She was constantly monitored then, and she might still be now. Even if she wasn’t, how much could she tell him? Everything? Where would she even begin? With the visions she experienced as a child?

Link was one of the few good things in her life, a sign that her fresh start away from home could be successful. She didn’t want to mess up their relationship before it even got started. It was probably better if she didn’t mention the giant hairy man in her shower that she may or may not have hallucinated.

Still, there was something about Link that made her feel as though she could trust him. When he expressed concern for her, it wasn’t oppressive or overbearing, and he didn’t seem to want or expect anything from her. Maybe she didn’t have to tell him everything _exactly_ as it happened, but she could still use some advice.

“Thanks, but I’m fine,” she said. “I just overslept and didn’t get my morning coffee. But I have a question for you. Are you familiar with the name Ganondorf?”

Link thought for a moment before smiling and shaking his head. “Nope,” he answered. “That’s an odd name. I’d remember it if I heard it before.” He paused and added, “Is he cute?”

Zelda considered the seven feet of scars and muscle covered in tarry slime that had crawled out of her nightmares and shattered her morning. “No, ‘cute’ isn’t the word I’d use.”

“Having an important conversation, are we?” Zelda’s supervisor, a Zora with sharp eyes and an even sharper tongue, interrupted her.

“Just a quick chat,” Zelda responded with a sheepish smile.

“Get back to work, then,” the woman said, not unkindly. “Nobody’s paying the delivery boy to gossip with everyone in our lab. Hylia knows what they _do_ pay him for. Get on with you, then.”

Link shot her a rakish grin but then frowned and stuck his hand into his bag. Whoever was calling him must be at it again. Zelda felt sick as she watched him walk away. Her intuition had always been sharp, and she had an awful feeling about this. If someone had managed to get under Link’s skin, they couldn’t be anything but bad news.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ganondorf is properly outfitted.

“Wait, I think I’ve got it,” Link exclaimed, pressing his finger to his temple and closing his eyes for dramatic effect. “You were the prince of a distant kingdom, but an evil witch was jealous of your beauty and cursed you to sleep for a thousand years.”

Ganondorf couldn’t understand every word Link said, but he was getting better at navigating the steady stream of his banter. It helped him to imagine that Link was speaking in a strong accent. He already had a decent amount of vocabulary, and the grammar resembled the dialect of Hylian he was used to. He wasn’t able to mimic Link’s pronunciation, but that would require time and no small amount of practice.

“It is so,” he agreed. “I was a most beautiful prince, in sleep for many years.”

“ _Asleep_ for many years,” Link corrected him.

Ganondorf nodded. “Only a kiss could wake.”

“Sorry, not buying it.” Link shook his head. “That doesn’t seem right. Let’s try again.”

Link walked in silence for a moment before launching into another theory. “Do you think you were abducted by aliens? Because I was watching this video on Naviscreen the other night, and…”

Ganondorf let the wave of words wash over him. Link would continue to talk regardless of whether he responded, and it took too much concentration to participate in whatever game he was playing while still tracking the route they were taking. As they walked, Ganondorf watched person after person look at Link and smile, only to then catch sight of him and look away. He resented the slippery glances and downcast eyes, but he resigned himself to this sort of treatment. Link was young and fashionably dressed, and it was only natural that people would be drawn to him. He was no exception. Ganondorf still didn’t fully understand the sequence of events that resulted in Link turning up at Zelda’s apartment and ushering him out into the bright light of the afternoon. All he knew was that he had begun experimenting with the device Zelda left behind, and it had somehow connected him to Link.

 _A computer_ , he thought. _It’s called a computer._

He’d spent hours brewing and drinking pot after pot of tea and attempting to puzzle out the secrets of the glowing screens, all the while inputting the sequence of numbers attached to Link’s name on every panel that contained numbers. He hadn’t recognized the young man who eventually arrived at Zelda’s door, but he still felt a vague emotional connection to him.

“That’s okay, you don’t have to answer that,” Link said, continuing a line of thought that Ganondorf had lost somewhere along the way. “It’s none of my business, really. I don’t know Zelda that well, to be honest. She never struck me as someone who would just bring people home out of the goodness of her heart, so she must have had some reason to take you in. I don’t know where she found you someone like you, but I trust her judgment. And really, I would do anything to help her. She’s special, that one. I can’t explain why, but I can feel it.”

“Yes,” Ganondorf responded, taken aback and slightly confused. He didn’t catch everything Link said, but Zelda was indeed special. Most people harbored a small spark of magical energy, but Zelda burned like the sun. Did Link truly not understand why she was different from other people? How could that be possible? Was he the only one who could sense her power?

“All right, we’re here!” Link announced, coming to a stop in front of a store with large show windows. “Hold on, I want to get a picture before we go in.”

Link withdrew his phone from his pocket. He tapped it a few times and held it in front of his face, watching the screen as he adjusted his bangs. He then positioned himself in front of a star decal on the store’s main display window and gave a winning smile before snapping the shutter several times.

“Come over here and get a picture with me,” Link invited, gesturing for Ganondorf to join him.

Ganondorf scowled in response. He didn’t understand what Link was doing, but he didn’t want any part of it.

“Oh, sorry. Of course. How silly of me,” Link apologized as he typed, tapping the screen of his phone rapidly. “Everybody likes looking at ‘before and after’ pictures, but nobody likes being in one. We can wait until we get you kitted out. You’re a handsome guy, and my feed is going to explode once I post you in a nice shirt. Or shirtless, your call.”

Ganondorf’s scowl deepened. He still had no idea what Link was talking about, but it sounded stupid to him. His “feed” was going to explode? What did that even mean? Why was Zelda friends with this boy?

The door opened, and a solidly built man with a trim black beard stuck his head out.

“Link!” he exclaimed. “I was wondering when I would see you again. Come on in, the lightning is better inside. And bring your friend with you, he is _more_ than welcome.”

“Purlo is the person I was telling you about earlier,” Link explained as he held the door open for Ganondorf. The cool interior was a relief after the oppressive summer humidity, and the soft lighting did indeed enhance the beauty of the clothing on display. Ganondorf had assumed that Link’s acquaintance was simply giving away old clothing, and he wasn’t prepared for this. Meanwhile, Purlo was already walking through the store and throwing shirts over his arm. Ganondorf couldn’t afford to draw attention to himself at this point, and he needed to leave before this – whatever _this_ was – became a situation.

“No rupees,” he hissed at Link.

“Don’t you or your gorgeous hair worry about money,” Purlo assured him. “I owe a lot to Link and his lovely little social media empire, and no friend of his owes me a thing. All I ask is that you let him take a few pictures, hmm? When he posts you in decent clothing, it is going to be a _sensation_. This boy’s feed has been dry for a while, and it could use some hydration.”

“The thirst is real,” Link agreed, blithely ignoring Purlo’s attempt to tease him.

“Now take off that ratty jacket,” Purlo said, handing a pile of shirts to Link. “It’s an embarrassment.”

Ganondorf couldn’t deny that this was true, but he didn’t appreciate Purlo’s tone. Zelda had given the jacket to him, and he felt strangely protective of it, cheap though it was. Still, he needed real clothing, so he did as he was told.

“Oh my.” Purlo whistled. “Do you just walk around looking like that? I should be paying _you_. Now be a dear and try on the orange. It will make that gorgeous complexion of yours shine like the sun.”

Ganondorf bristled at Purlo’s overfamiliarity. He wanted to counter with the observation that Purlo’s green blazer wasn’t doing anything for his own complexion, but he kept his thoughts to himself and accepted the button-down shirt Link offered. It was a mellow shade of hydromelon orange, and fine strands of silvery white thread were incorporated into the loose weave of its fabric. The shirt was soft and light and smelled freshly starched. Ganondorf hesitated to put it on. Nothing came without a price, and he couldn’t be certain that he wasn’t being taken advantage of.

“It’s okay for you to take it,” Link said, apparently misreading his hesitation. “The word on the street is that Purlo is the guy who invented Tinglr. He’s loaded, and he just runs this shop as a hobby.”

“Now who would go and say such a thing?” Purlo winked at them and made no attempt to deny the rumor.

Ganondorf resented having to rely on other people’s charity, but he didn’t have much of a choice. He needed to be presentable before he could move freely. Despite his irritation, he decided to tolerate whatever private amusement Link and Purlo were deriving from this process. If they wanted to record his image, then so be it. Sacrifices must be made for fashion.

Ganondorf went through a rainbow of shades from teal to saffron to aubergine before his patience began to fray dangerously thin. He made a point of selecting an outfit and then, after allowing Link to take several pictures, waved the phone away with a stern look.

“What a godsend you are,” Purlo purred as he folded a small pile of shirts. “I’ve kept inventory in Gerudo sizes just waiting for a _voe_ like you to walk through the door. You must make sure to tag me on _everything_ ,” he added with a pointed glance at Link, who was already tapping away at his screen. “Now that you look like a human being, all we need to do it get rid of that ghastly thing you wore in off the street. I keep a bin out back for that very purpose,” he said, making a motion to pick up the polyester tracksuit jacket.

“Do not dare touch it,” Ganondorf snarled, surprising himself with the force of his words. Purlo rolled his eyes and walked away, but Link looked up from his phone with a startled expression.

Ganondorf realized that, in his possessiveness over the clothing Zelda had given him, he’d revealed a part of himself that he hadn’t intended for anyone to see. He’d been foolish to allow himself to demonstrate raw emotion like that. He had a feeling that Link was far more perceptive than he let on, and he would have to be careful in the future.

The shadow on Link’s face dissipated just as quickly as it had gathered. “It’s a nice tracksuit,” he said with a shrug, “and it fits. You should definitely keep it. I mean, honestly, you should see the clothes I work out in. They’re probably older than I am. Hey, you know what? Let’s go jogging together tomorrow morning! You’re not staying with Zelda, right? So why don’t you spend the night at my place, I have a sofa with your name on it.”

Ganondorf still didn’t entirely trust Link, but his options were limited. His main concern was figuring out who he was and what Zelda had done to him, but he would need to save his strength as he marshaled whatever resources were available to him. In the meantime, he needed to eat, as well as a place to sleep. At the moment he had little choice but to allow himself to be swept along by whatever current he’d become caught up in. Link seemed to enjoy being helpful and solving problems, and Ganondorf knew he’d continue to carry on like this as long as he did nothing to stop him. Being dependent on another person like this filled him with a sense of unease, but he refused to go back to Zelda; his instinct for survival told him that it would be dangerous to confront her without a better understanding of his situation.

“You never invite _me_ over,” Purlo pouted.

“You know what you did,” Link responded. Turning to Ganondorf, he explained, “He came to one of my parties wearing a bright green bodysuit and stoned out of his mind. He was throwing around glitter, saying he’d invented some sort of magic spell, and it took months to get the apartment clean.”

“Maybe I can get an invite from the big guy, then. What’s your Skyloft handle, handsome?”

“He doesn’t have a phone,” Link answered before looking up at Ganondorf and grinning. “Yet.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Zelda reflects on the nature of a power she no longer wishes to deny.

A week passed uneventfully.

When Zelda returned home after her nightmare of a morning, there was nothing to indicate that anyone had been in her apartment. Her door was unlocked, but it hung neatly by its hinges and showed no signs of having been forced open. There were no charred footprints on her floor and no tarry slime in her bathroom. There was no indication that she had left out dishes or a towel, which were clean and stacked neatly in their proper places. Her refrigerator was almost completely empty, but she may very well have done this herself. Her appetite had changed since she stopped taking her medication, and she occasionally caught herself eating much more than she used to, sometimes without noticing at all.

During the past few weeks, she’d had occasion to wonder whether it was really necessary to throw away her pills. She had enough training in organic chemistry to understood the principle of how such things worked, after all, and she knew the medication necessary to treat certain conditions required time and consistency to work properly. It was important for people with various psychiatric disorders to continue taking their medication, of course, even if they felt fine in the moment. Zelda understood this, and she knew the pills she’d taken every day since she was a girl were effective. Her vivid dreams and nightmares hadn’t stopped, but she no longer experienced visions during the day.

The problem was that she hadn’t been able to figure out what her medication _was_ , not even with four years of access to her university’s lab equipment and research library. The chemical components of the tablets she was given weren’t even remotely similar to those of any existing medicine she could find. She considered the possibility that they were some sort of herbal concoction, or perhaps a remarkably sophisticated placebo, but her investigations in those directions had yielded no results.

The only thing left to try was to stop taking the pills altogether, but her father’s staff alerted him immediately when she skipped a day. She received a stern warning from him, as well as a lengthy lecture from her doctor, Impa. Both of them said the same thing: Do you want things to go back to the way they were in the hospital?

She did not, in fact. Still, truth be told, she’d been very young when she was hospitalized, and she couldn’t remember many concrete details. Her only memories of that time were wrapped in a haze of pain and accompanied by a parade of vivid images that couldn’t possibly have been real. She recalled something like a dark passage underground, a cave with high ceilings and subterranean pools of dark water. There were strange paintings on the walls, and swirling lights that looked almost like letters. No, it couldn’t have been real, especially since her nightmares had seemed as real as her waking life at the time.

The only sure thing Zelda knew about her hospital stay is that it had lasted almost two years. Once she recovered, she had to be homeschooled for another year before being quietly enrolled in a small private school for the children of diplomats. Her classmates came and went practically every month, it seemed, and only she remained behind. She was shy to begin with, and not many people bothered to talk to her. They all had their own circles of friends made up of other children they knew from other elite schools, and later people they met at shows and house parties around the city. Zelda made a few attempts to sneak out when she was older, but she was always caught, if not by her Sheikah escort then by tabloid journalists. She was constantly being told not to exert herself, and she never made the friends or memories that most people associated with being a teenager. Her father had discouraged her from studying abroad or applying to college early, and she couldn’t do much of anything without his financial backing. She didn’t bother to attend her graduation, since it didn’t seem like anything worth celebrating.

Zelda didn’t escape into books the ways another child in her situation might have, and she learned quickly that anything she wrote or posted online would be monitored by the staff in charge of her care. She wanted to know more about the world, and she wanted to be normal – or as close to normal as someone like her could get. She was accepted into a prestigious university within the city and performed brilliantly in her classes. Unfortunately, everyone knew who her father was, and she was accompanied by a near-constant Sheikah escort that made it difficult for anyone to approach her. Practically the only person who talked to her was Riju, but Riju was a princess, after all.

Zelda had Riju to thank for helping her leave home and giving her a place to stay while she went through the process of changing her name, looking for a job, and leasing an apartment. She would have been happy to stay with Riju for longer, but she needed a place of her own.

It had been her family’s resistance to any sign of independence that had convinced her to leave in the first place. She understood that she couldn’t be a liability for her father’s political career, and she’d had enough bad experiences with unethical journalists and online trolls to know that anything she said or did could be twisted and used against her father. Nevertheless, his idea of “protection” went too far, and no one on his staff – not even Impa – was her ally. She gradually developed a fierce resentment of everyone’s insistence that she was weak and needed to be protected. Even if this weren’t condescending and borderline abusive, it simply wasn’t true.

If this were all there was to her story, she might have been content to allow herself to be groomed for the role of her father’s backstage political aide, which seemed to be his intention. Her situation was almost like a fairy tale – a young woman from a powerful family is kept in a gilded cage and yearns for freedom. Zelda’s father wasn’t evil or stupid, however; and Impa was sharp enough to cut through a concrete wall with her mind. Both Impa and her father were successful precisely because they could see matters clearly and didn’t delude themselves with fantasies of how they wished other people would behave, and it couldn’t have escaped their notice that she was exceptionally strong and healthy. Her good health was almost supernatural, in fact. Despite the dreams and the visions and the pills and the hospital stay, Zelda had never been sick a day in her life.

Zelda’s university work focused on biology and chemistry, but the required history classes she took with Riju forced her to rethink the memories she had almost forgotten. It seemed impossible – it _must_ be impossible – but she had once been able to do magic. Not card tricks or other sleights of hand, but _real_ magic, magic that transformed the world around her and filled her with an incredible sense of power.

One of her first memories was of stretching upwards to pick up an apple. It was on top of a counter that was too high for her to reach with her own hands, but she was able to envision a hand, much larger than her own, scooping up the apple and placing it neatly into her cupped palms. This seemed exactly like the sort of magical thinking a child would indulge in, but Zelda had never been given to flights of fancy. She knew that this had been real. She remembered the sweet taste of the apple, and the soft and comforting light of the hand, and her delight in the sensation of _stretching_. It was as if she had been set free in an open field, and she could run forever.

Whatever she had done, however, she had forgotten how to do it. Zelda had even begun to harbor a suspicion that it might be more accurate to say that she had been made to forget how to do it.

There were documented accounts of historical figures performing magic as recently as the turn of the last century, but such records abruptly ceased when the last scion of Hyrule’s royal family abdicated her throne and relinquished her political privilege. This was partially a result of primitive superstitions evaporating in the light of modern rationality, of course, but it was possible that there could be a more interesting explanation hiding under the dusty surface of the dry historical documents. A great deal of scientific progress had been made even during her own lifetime, and it might be that science could be used to understand what had happened in the past.

If nothing else, Zelda’s dreams wouldn’t let her forget what it felt like for magic to rush from her mind into the world around her. She still dreamt of magic, and sometimes she had marvelous abilities in her nightmares as well. During the past week her dreams had been especially vivid, but they still vanished when she woke up. Regardless of what the truth of magic might be, dreams were just dreams, and Zelda could almost believe that her monstrous visitor had been nothing more than a dream as well, except…

…except for the news reports.

There had been an unseasonable heatwave the day that he appeared, and that night the city had been hit by a major storm, with lightning and thunder and hail lasting for hours. The storm resulted in major damage throughout the greater metro area, but the weather couldn’t account for everything. Electric lines had not just fallen but had been _cut_ all across the city, and a number of storefronts and public monuments had been defaced. This could have been the work of an especially aggressive team of vandals, but there was also a violent break-in at the national diet building that had resulted in the demolition of its main entrance. A subway tunnel had collapsed, and one of the most prominent downtown skyscrapers had to be condemned after its foundation sustained major structural damage. This was the sort of destruction that could only have been caused by an earthquake, but there had been no earthquake, only repeated accounts of something terrible in the shadows, a hideous lurching thing with glowing eyes and far too many legs.

One person couldn’t have been responsible for that degree of destruction, but the man who appeared at the door of her apartment hadn’t been human. She tried to forget him, as she had forgotten so many things during her childhood, but his face haunted her dreams, and in her dreams all of Hyrule burned.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ganondorf begins to exert his will on the world.

Using a computer came to him naturally. When he discovered the hidden language of numbers and symbols underneath the operating system of Link’s spare laptop, he felt at home with the glowing black screen and harsh white characters; it was like remembering something he’d known long ago. 

The language was more difficult, but he learned quickly. Link was always willing to talk, and Ganondorf made a habit of repeating what he said and how he said it, which Link seemed to find amusing. Link enjoyed the way that Ganondorf pronounced words, and he would type strange sentences onto the screen of his phone and ask Ganondorf to read them out loud. Ganondorf had no doubt that Link was recording his voice and posting it online, but this didn’t bother him. He was making good progress in mimicking the tones and inflections of the newscasters on the state broadcasting channel, and he would be able to speak without an accent soon enough. 

Ganondorf resented having to rely on another person, but Link himself was difficult to dislike. He was inhumanly friendly, and he attracted smiles everywhere he went. He was charmingly enthusiastic about cooking but terrible at it, and Ganondorf made meals for the both of them, mastering the appliances in Link’s kitchen with the same acuity that he demonstrated with his laptop. 

He spent his days and nights finding his way around the internet. It frustrated him at first, but he soon learned to navigate as rapidly as he could read. He searched for himself everywhere, clicking through pages of Navi results before eventually finding his way onto enormous databases that weren’t connected to any search engines but weren’t under any sort of security protection either. As far as Ganondorf could tell, however, he did not exist. 

With no viable alternative, he assembled an identity for himself. It wasn’t difficult, nor was it difficult to create a bank account and a credit line. The long-dormant accounts of the dead held obscene and unspeakable wealth. The physical substance of this wealth was surely hidden behind a complicated system of locks and keys, but on the internet he was able to reach his hands through walls as softly and quietly as a ghost. The registers of the recently deceased were readily available, and this sort of digital necromancy required no great skill. The channels of information Ganondorf accessed were underground, it was true, but they were shallow. 

Power – true power, the ability to sway people’s hearts and minds – was difficult to achieve and required time and careful groundwork. Money was much easier to manipulate. Once you had money, no one bothered to ask where it came from. 

Within a week he’d secured a job. Link had observed his facility with computers and offered to introduce him to a friend who could find him a position in tech support, but Ganondorf refused to demean himself. He would serve an employer only inasmuch as it conferred an air of legitimacy, and he insisted on selecting this employer himself. Ganondorf checked Link’s route on the Beedlenet server every morning, and he accompanied him when he was scheduled to make deliveries to the banking offices downtown. He wore the suit Purlo tailored for him and did not bother with a card, sharing only his name and phone number via wireless transmission. Between his accent and his confidence, no one asked for references. 

Link did not question this, nor did he question why Ganondorf was able to access the Beedlenet server. Ganondorf found this level of trust suspicious. Link was much cleverer than he let on, and Ganondorf couldn’t say for certain that Link hadn’t figured out what he was doing during the hours he spent online. If this was the case – and Ganondorf strongly suspected it was – then Link must have some motive underlying his discretion, and he didn’t yet know Link well enough to ascertain what that might be. As much as he enjoyed Link’s company, he could no longer stay in the same apartment without exposing himself to closer scrutiny. 

Link had a wide circle of acquaintances, and Ganondorf accepted his offer to make use of this network to find lodging close to the firm that employed him. Unlike Link’s walk-up, which was inconveniently located but spacious and airy, Ganondorf’s apartment wasn’t much better than Zelda’s. It was arguably worse, and he resented how it was little more than a cell. He deserved better, and he resolved that he would have it, in time. 

Within two weeks he had earned enough to pay Link back for the smartphone and laptop he borrowed, and he refunded him for the deposit on the apartment. We would be able to afford a better arrangement soon, but he decided it was better to keep a low profile until he could establish a more stable identity. The fabrication he’d pieced together had served him well thus far, but it would be ideal if the identity he assumed as he moved through the world were his own. 

He kept himself so busy that he barely slept, but in the odd quiet moment his thoughts returned to Zelda. What had she done to him? Link didn’t seem to believe she was dangerous, but Link may have had his own reasons for befriending her. Ganondorf had taken the chance of asking about Zelda, but Link’s answer was noncommittal. It was strange that Link never brought her up in conversation. It might simply be that it was too awkward for Link to ask what Ganondorf had been doing without any clothing of his own in Zelda’s apartment, but Ganondorf’s impression of Link was that he had never done or said anything awkward in his life. Link would talk about anything else with complete openness, and Ganondorf began to feel that Link was waiting for him to reveal the nature of his relationship with Zelda.

Ganondorf began to realize that it may have been foolish to assume that Link was unaware of Zelda’s magic. Link had no magic himself, so he may not have known exactly why Zelda was special, but he seemed to be attempting to protect her in some way. Ganondorf had been careful not to bring Zelda up in conversation again. From what he’d been able to gather, however, no one could possibly have known the extent of her power. 

Discussions of magic in general seemed to be taboo here, and Ganondorf kept his own talents concealed. His working theory was that there was some sort of resonance between Zelda’s magic and his own. Because of this resonance, she had done something to his memory, sealing it in some way for reasons of her own. Perhaps he had seen or discovered something she wanted to keep secret. It might even be the case that not even she understood what she had done. Based on the sorry state of her clothes and apartment, she must have been trying to keep a low profile, just as he was. This made Ganondorf even more wary of her, but he knew he would have to confront her eventually. He needed to know what she had done to him.

In the meantime, he spent every hour working, and bending his circumstances to fit the shape of his will required intense concentration. He was not content to remain nameless to the world, and there was no point in wasting time in idle speculation.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Zelda has a troubling conversation with Riju.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This illustration of Riju is by the marvelous [Sonia Stegemann](https://twitter.com/soniastegemann).

Riju was the very personification of elegance, even in the off-black tracksuit she wore to meet Zelda after work, and she was shown to the best table on the café’s garden patio as soon as she walked through the door. The server who seated them barely glanced at Zelda, who trailed along behind Riju in a cheap pair of sunglasses she got at the grocery store, but that suited her just fine. It was always like this when she went out with Riju. Riju was gorgeous, and she could have bought the entire restaurant with a snap of her fingers. Everyone she met respected her, and even people who didn’t know her fell in love with her. Her cavalier attitude could be frustrating at times, but Zelda was happy that she was her friend.

“So,” Riju said after a server interrupted their conversation to bring her another glass of voltfruit juice. “Why did you invite me out?”

“Do I need a reason?” Zelda asked. She’d barely touched her tea, and she forced herself to take a sip.

“Of course not,” Riju replied, “but I know you. You never do anything without a reason.”

Zelda didn’t know how to respond and took another sip of tea.

“Not that I blame you,” Riju continued. “The way you were raised should be a crime. Is it treason to say that I want to smack your father right in his stupid face sometimes? Some people really shouldn’t be allowed to have children. He’s a nice guy and all, but you know.”

Zelda nodded. She did know. She would never say so out loud, but she agreed with Riju’s assessment of how her father had handled her upbringing. The way she was treated seemed only natural to her when she was younger, but she’d recently begun to question a number of the choices her father had made. She also appreciated that Riju was trying to give her an opening into a conversation, but she didn’t want to talk about her family.

“All right,” she began. “I need to ask you a question. It’s a bit weird, but I’m being serious.”

“The answer is ‘yes.’ I will absolutely marry you. My mothers have been trying to get me to set a date for years now.”

Zelda smiled but didn’t allow herself to be sidetracked. “No, listen, it’s about the name ‘Ganondorf.’ It sounds like a stupid fantasy name…”

“Says the girl named Zelda.”

“…but is there any chance it might be a Gerudo name?”

Riju laughed and shook her head. “It’s definitely not a Gerudo name.”

“I didn’t think so, but it’s not a Hylian name either, and…” Zelda trailed off as she realized that she didn’t quite know what she meant to ask.

“Why are you asking about Ganondorf?”

“Do you know him?”

“You could say that.”

“Oh, thank Hylia,” Zelda said, relieved. “I thought I made him up.”

A strange expression surfaced on Riju’s face. “Why would you think that?” she asked.

“Because he just showed up in my apartment, and then he vanished. I’ve met Gerudo men before, of course, but never, you know, a _voe_. The entire encounter was so weird, and I can’t even begin to describe…”

Zelda found herself at a loss for words as she recalled the monster that had appeared in her doorway. There was no way she could explain what he looked like to Riju, and she cursed herself for bringing him up. She knew Riju didn’t think she was crazy, but there was no way to tell this story without sounding like something was wrong with her. Her first instinct was to brush the matter off and change the subject, but she wanted to find out what Riju knew.

“Wait, hold up,” Riju said as a deep crease appeared between her eyebrows. “You’re telling me a Gerudo man showed up at your apartment? Calling himself Ganondorf? And he was an actual _voe_? You’re sure about that?”

“I’m quite sure.” Zelda could feel herself blush as she remembered the man in her shower. He had been about as _voe_ as a _voe_ could get.

“That is some shit. If I didn’t already know you’re incapable of lying to me, I’d say you’re lying to me.”

“I don’t understand. You said you knew Ganondorf.”

Riju leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Not a lot of people know this, but Ganondorf is the name of the man who became Ganon. This isn’t the sort of thing you’d find on Hylian Navi, but no Gerudo would name her child Ganondorf. And definitely no Gerudo would decide to call themselves by that name, not unless they were seriously fucked in the head.”

“But that makes no sense,” Zelda objected. “Ganon couldn’t possibly have been a man. Surely I of all people would know if such a person existed, and besides, the thing, I mean, the _person_ who showed up at my apartment was our age.”

Riju’s frown vanished as her expression grew thoughtful. “I don’t doubt that something happened to you, but I think there’s something you’re not telling me.”

“I’m not sure I can tell you the whole story. Like I said, I was afraid I made the whole thing up, or saw it in a hallucination. Or something.”

“I don’t like it when you use the word ‘hallucination.’ That’s not how hallucinations work, and no offense, but I don’t think you could make something like that up. Have you considered that you may have seen a vision?”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I should go home and talk to your mother. Do you want to come?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Come on, Zelda. You’re an adult, and she’s your mother. I don’t understand what your damage is.”

“Riju, we’ve talked about his. My mother abandoned me when I was in the hospital, and then she never wrote or tried to get in contact with me after that. I can’t pretend like all of that didn’t happen, like she’s ‘just a person.’ If you hadn’t found her, I wouldn’t even know that she’s still alive.”

“I get that, really I do, but there’s actually a lot you don’t know.”

Zelda was starting to become annoyed. “Like what, exactly?”

“It would be better if you spoke to her yourself, but fine. If you’re going to go around saying the name ‘Ganondorf’ out loud, then I might as well be the one to tell you. You inherited your mother’s magical abilities, and your father’s family forced her to leave Hyrule so that she wouldn’t pass anything on to you. The way she talked about it made it seem like your family thinks magic is contagious. Which is one of the most ignorant things I’ve ever heard in my life, by the way. Like I said, sometimes I really want to slap some sense into your father.”

Zelda stared at Riju, unable to process what she was saying.

“And it’s a shame,” Riju continued, “because you’re really powerful. I mean, _really_ powerful. We should probably stop talking about this, because who knows what sort of Sheikah gestapo are lurking around, but it’s time you got out of Hyrule. I don’t know why you insist on staying here, honestly. Why don’t you come home with me to Lanayru sometime? Just for a few days? You’re so smart, but you need to see more of the world. I think you’d understand more about yourself if you could spend some time in a place where there’s not a weird prohibition against magic. I like Hyrule a lot, but this place is so _backwards_ sometimes.”

Riju shook her head in a gesture of dismay and then drained her glass of voltfruit juice. Zelda, not knowing how to respond, watched her without saying anything. She was suddenly very thirsty, but her tea had grown cold and murky. Riju looked at her, looked at the film on the surface of her tea, and flagged down a server to order two fresh glasses of juice.

“Just talking about this makes me thirsty,” she said, offering Zelda an apologetic smile. “I know you don’t have a passport, but I can get you a diplomatic visa. How soon do you think you can take a week off from your job?”

“I need to use the bathroom,” Zelda said abruptly as she pushed her chair back from the table. The grating of the iron legs against the concrete was harsh in her ears.

“Take your time,” Riju replied, already reaching for her phone.

Zelda could hear the tap of Riju’s nails on the screen as she stepped into the cool interior of the café. She loved Riju like a sister, but sometimes Riju just didn’t get it. There was no way she could afford to take time off work. She’d just started, for one thing, and the rent wouldn’t pay itself.

She also didn’t know what to make of what Riju had just told her. When she heard the words spoken in Riju’s level and confident voice, saying these things as if she took them for granted, it seemed obvious that Hyrule’s taboo on magic was unnecessary and illogical. That would explain a lot, actually. The reason why Zelda left the conversation before she said something she’d regret wasn’t because she was startled by the revelation that magic was “real.” On the contrary, she was upset because she had known this all along but hadn’t been able to acknowledge it. She was on the verge of tears, but not because of any sense of loss or regret. Zelda was furious.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ganondorf’s confrontation with Zelda does not unfold in the manner he expected.

“Zelda.”

Ganondorf waited for her to answer him. He was prepared to spend all evening waiting if need be. He knew she was inside her apartment; he had watched her enter through the front door of the building not ten minutes ago. Loitering outside a woman’s home in order to follow her inside was unsavory behavior, to say the least. He found it distasteful, but he had to confront her. If he could convince her to explain what she’d done to him, perhaps he could reverse the damage. If he couldn’t persuade her, he would have to use force.

“Zelda,” he said again. “Let me in. I want to talk.”

She would answer him eventually. She had no choice, just as he had no choice but to come here.

He heard her footsteps fall on the bare floorboards as she walked to the door. The dimly lit hallway was deathly silent, and he could hear her breathing. She seemed to be on the verge of hyperventilation. Sweet Nayru, was _she_ frightened of _him_?

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he assured her, hoping that he would be able to keep his word.

“Why are you here?” she asked from the other side of the door.

“I have questions.”

“I’m not the person to answer them.”

Although it put him at a disadvantage, Ganondorf decided to tell her the truth. “I think you’re the only person who can.”

He waited for her response.

The lock clicked, and Zelda opened the door. He knew she wouldn’t invite him in, so stepped across the threshold before she could stop him.

“I don’t know you, and I never met you before you showed up here. That was weeks ago. Why do you think I can tell you anything?” she demanded as she closed the door behind him.

“I don’t know anything about myself but my name, and I don’t remember anything that happened to me before I found myself standing naked in your shower. You did something to me, and I want to know why.”

Zelda’s face shifted. “No, _you_ suddenly showed up at _my_ apartment. You were absolutely filthy and speaking in a language I didn’t understand. And yes, you’re right – you were _completely_ naked when you broke down my door. Now you’re here in a suit, asking _me_ to explain what happened to _you_? I let you in because I didn’t want you causing a scene in the hallway. I’ve already told you everything I know, which is that I don’t know anything. I don’t want any trouble, and I think you should leave.”

“That can’t be true,” Ganondorf objected. “You must know me. I know _your_ name, which was the only thing I remembered besides my own. All I have is my name, your name, and the feeling that I was asleep for a long time before I woke up here. I had to spend the past few weeks learning your _language_ , for Din’s sake, so I don’t even know where I came from. Of all of the places in a city that’s alien to me, I somehow ended up at your apartment. You summoned me. Why?”

“I summoned you? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t play dumb with me. I can sense your power.”

“My power? I don’t have anything like that.” Her eyes darted away from him.

“It won’t do you any good to lie to me.” He grabbed her hand and held it in his, opening a channel between them that gave him access her magic. The contact caused a brilliant white light to erupt from her fingers.

Ganondorf flung her hand back at her. “Don’t tell me you don’t have power.”

Zelda looked at her hand with wide eyes and then looked back at him.

“How did you do that?” she whispered.

Ganondorf’s scowl fell from his face as he realized that her question was sincere.

“You genuinely don’t know.”

“I remember doing this as a child, or something like it, but I always thought I must have been imagining it, and… Who _are_ you?”

“That’s what I was hoping you could tell me.”

Zelda didn’t respond as she watched the light fade from her hand. She twisted her wrist from side to side and clenched her fist, but nothing happened. She thrust her hand back at him.

“Teach me how to do what you just did.”

Her imperious tone filled Ganondorf with rage. He clutched her shoulder and pushed her back against the door. He seized her hand again and forced the channel between their magic open, bringing forth a light so bright that it drained the color from her face.

“Do not give me orders,” he hissed. “If you don’t know what you did to me, I’ll find out myself. Your ignorance is no excuse. I will pick apart your mind if that’s the only way to get what I want.”

“I understand now,” she said from underneath him, her voice devoid of emotion. “You’re not real.”

Ganondorf had harbored the same doubt himself. He didn’t exist in records, and he didn’t exist online. His name was a nonsense word that meant nothing. No one he met recognized him, and no one had come looking for him. May the gods help him, but it was almost as he was nothing more than a fantasy that this woman had somehow brought to life. He needed to prove to Zelda that he was just as real as she was. He relaxed his grip on her hand and placed her palm on his chest above his heart. He could feel her pulse on his skin though the fabric of his shirt. He moved her hand to his face, guiding her fingers along his jaw. She didn’t flinch.

“I’m real,” he said.

“I can see that.” She swallowed, clearly frightened, but her eyes never left his. “But I need you to believe me when I say that I don’t know who you are or what happened to you.”

Ganondorf could sense she was telling the truth. The connection between them allowed him to understand that she truly couldn’t explain what was going on. She was just as frustrated as he was, and she wanted answers to his questions just as badly as he did. She was suppressing it, but she was filled with an anger as profound as his own. He could also sense that there was something she was concealing from him, something important, but he couldn’t fully grasp what it was. Nor, his intuition told him, could she. He could open the connection wider and push deeper into her, but it would hurt both of them if she resisted. There had to be a more efficient way to find what had been hidden from her.

“I believe you,” he said. He released her hand, but she continued to hold it to his face, as if to convince herself that he was indeed real. She traced his lower lip with her thumb, and color returned to the world as the light emanating from her hand faded.

“I have a proposition for you,” she said as she stepped away from him.

He retraced the path of her fingers across his face as he listened to what she had to say.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but I’d like to find out. I’ll help you figure out what happened to you. In return, I want you to teach me magic.”

A grin teased the corner of Ganondorf’s mouth. Teach her magic? The notion was ridiculous, but it wouldn’t be difficult to turn such a situation to his advantage. He’d assumed this woman was his enemy, but perhaps she didn’t have to be. Perhaps she might even be useful to him. He had no way of knowing how useful, or for what purpose, but he had every intention of finding out.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Zelda begins to play a dangerous game with Ganondorf.

The rent was due and the rent was due and the rent was due, and that was all she could think about, how the rent was due.

Zelda fidgeted with her phone on the train home, trying to refresh her email and failing, knowing that it was useless in the reception dead zone of the tunnels underneath the city. It was a lost cause to begin with; no help was coming, no offer of a new job. She had been scrolling through listings for weeks, but she was been too tired and stressed out to apply to anything. The situation with Ganondorf wasn’t helping, and Riju kept insisting that they take a vacation together. Riju meant well, but Zelda was running out of ways to convince her to put her plans on hold. She wasn’t making much as a lab assistant, and she didn’t have a great deal of experience with managing such a tight budget. Her landlord would probably grant her a grace period on the rent, but that was a conversation she didn’t want to have. In the meantime, she needed something to do with her hands so her mind would stop spinning in circles. Her email continued not refreshing, so she eventually gave up and turned off the screen.

It startled her when her phone vibrated in her hand as she climbed the stairs up from the platform. She paused outside the station and looked at the notification, but she didn’t understand what she saw. There was a message from RavioPay informing her that a transfer of 200,000 rupees was pending to her account. She apparently needed to log in to authorize the transaction. She swiped away the notification and checked her email, where a similar message was waiting for her. She scanned the text for the identity of the sender, but all she could find was a chain of digits. The account number and routing number, probably.

Zelda was so annoyed that she shut down her phone entirely. It had been a grueling day at work, and now she had to deal with a scam. RavioPay was notoriously difficult to contact, and she’d probably have to send photocopies of several documents to verify her identity if she wanted to report the incident. If she even bothered to do anything, that was. Whoever was trying to scam her could just take her bank account if they wanted it; it’s not as if there was any money there, and perhaps it would be more useful to someone else than it was to her.

Zelda didn’t bother to change out of her work clothes when she got home. She kicked off her shoes in the foyer and slid open the glass door in the living room to let in fresh air before collapsing on the ratty sofa. The odor of the train lingered on her clothing, and she could smell the sweat on her face and neck. She should probably take a shower, but only after she rested.

She allowed her mind to wander as she stared out into the small patch of dirt and grass that served as the backyard for her building. The sun was setting, and the fragments of broken glass scattered on the ground caught the light and shone like jewels. A dense mass of honeysuckle was making its riotous way across the derelict fence separating the yard of her building from the identical yard of the townhouse next door, and its smell was sweet and green. Someone was practicing guitar, and she could hear the faint jangle of a chord replayed over and over.

The remains of the afternoon were peacefully sinking into twilight, but Zelda felt ill at ease. There was something bothering her that went beyond her unpaid rent and the weird notification from RavioPay.

_That thing is coming._

A voice seemed to be whispering directly into Zelda’s ear, and she was too tired to pretend she didn’t hear it. “What’s coming?” she asked out loud. Not that she expected a response. She had a vague recollection of having premonitions as a child, and they had sometimes come to her in the form of soft voices telling her things she couldn’t possibly know. At least, this is what she thought she remembered, but nothing resembling a premonition had occurred to her in a long time. Or, rather, that wasn’t quite true. She’d felt the same sense of ill omen on the morning Ganondorf appeared. She resolved not to dismiss the voice as an auditory hallucination. If nothing else, she’d promised Riju that she would give the idea of magic the benefit of the doubt.

Zelda thought about calling Riju, but it felt like to much of a hassle to get up and retrieve her phone from her purse. Whatever was coming for her would just have to wait.

There was a knock on her door, almost as if on cue. Zelda had no intention of answering. It was probably one of the neighbors, or maybe even the landlord himself. She actually liked her landlord, a Goron getting on in years, but she wasn’t in the mood to chat with anyone. She’d left the advertising circulars in the mailbox in the outside corridor, so there was no indication that she was home. She remained motionless and tried not to breathe as she waited for whoever it was to go away.

“You didn’t lock your door, Zelda.”

Although his accent wasn’t as distinct as she remembered, the voice in the hallway unmistakably belonged to Ganondorf. She jerked her head up from the couch cushion, catching one of her earrings on the weave of the fabric. It hurt, and she let out an ungraceful squawk of pain. So much for pretending she wasn’t here.

“If you won’t answer me, I’m going to let myself in.”

Was he trying to be polite? Ganondorf had forced his way into her apartment a week ago, not to mention when he first appeared. He was the last person she wanted to see right now, but Zelda knew it was useless to ignore him.

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t,” she called out, trying to untangle her earring. It wouldn’t come loose, so she had to slip it out of her ear. No doubt her hair had come loose in the process. That was just what she needed, to look like a crazy person when she confronted her stalker.

Zelda tripped over one of her discarded shoes but regained her balance before she opened the door. She’d been prepared to tell Ganondorf to fuck off, but her words died on her tongue when she saw him standing in front of her. His beard was neatly trimmed, and his hair was pulled back in a loose topknot. The dark suit he wore was immaculate, and Zelda briefly wondered how someone his size went about finding clothes that fit him so well.

Ganondorf’s golden eyes gleamed. “Are you going to invite me in?”

“I don’t think I should,” Zelda responded as she opened the door and stepped out of his way. She watched his feet as he walked inside. He wore the most beautiful shoes she had ever seen on a man.

Ganondorf slipped past her and sat on the sofa where she’d just been lying. She half hoped he would sit on the back of her earring, but he spotted it and picked it up effortlessly before setting it on the side table without comment.

Zelda allowed the door to swing shut behind her. She had come to an arrangement with Ganondorf during their last conversation, but that didn’t mean she had to like him. She hadn’t expected him to show up today, and she didn’t have the slightest intention of making him feel welcome.

“You certainly have a habit of inviting yourself in, don’t you?” she snapped. “Why don’t you tell me what you want so you can be on your way.”

“I sent you a money transfer. I’d like you to accept it.”

Zelda’s surprise was short-lived and quickly superseded by annoyance. “You could have called before you came here.”

“Your phone was off.”

“So you just showed up.”

“I was in the neighborhood.”

“You were no such thing. Explain yourself.”

“I checked your balance. It’s almost at zero. What I sent you should cover this month’s rent, and possibly the next. You can’t be paying much for this place.”

“You checked my balance? That’s criminal fraud. How did you hack into my bank account?”

“I didn’t ‘hack into your bank account.’ You left a note with your username and password on your laptop, and I happened to see it and take it with me. You really shouldn’t use the same password for every account.”

“What gives you the right?”

“You’re the only soul in Hyrule who knows anything about me. I don’t want you to be in a position where you feel this information would be valuable to others.”

“What makes you think I don’t have money?”

Ganondorf made a sweeping gesture, indicating her living room. There were stains on the walls and cracks in the ceiling, and the bare floorboards were uneven. The glass of the sliding door was cloudy with age, and the garden beyond it was overgrown with weeds. The furniture inside was secondhand at best. Aside from a few books on a mostly empty shelf, there was nothing to indicate that someone actually lived here. Zelda was proud of her apartment, no matter how modest it was, but when she saw it through Ganondorf’s eyes it looked small and shabby. She could only imagine how she herself looked to him, in tired clothing with one earring missing.

She was suddenly furious. “You need to leave.”

“Offer me tea first.”

“What.”

“I said offer me tea. I’m a guest in your home.”

“Make it yourself.”

“That was my intention. You and Link are exactly alike. Both of you could burn water.”

How did he know Link? And how did he know that Link was her friend? Link never spoke much about his personal life, and the fact that he knew Ganondorf was news to her. She’d have to call and ask him about it later, preferably after she changed all her passwords.

“Fine. Go make tea.”

Ganondorf coughed and looked out into the yard. He knew he had gotten his way, but he had the good grace to seem embarrassed about it.

“How about a ‘thank you?’” Zelda prompted.

“Thank you for giving me the privilege of serving you tea. Now get on your computer and accept the transfer. It will save us both a lot of trouble.”

Zelda glared at him. How could he be so rude? She remembered what he had looked like when he first came to her apartment, covered in horrifying scars that oozed with tarry black goo. She remembered his glowing eyes, and the hideous mask covering his face, and the way his body shifted every time she looked away from him. He was like something from one of her nightmares, or like one of the visions she had seen in the hospital.

If magic was real, however, then what she had seen while she was “sick” might be real too. For all she knew, Ganondorf could very well be a monster that had temporarily taken the shape of a man. She couldn’t begin to imagine what his connection to the mythical demon Ganon (or the not-so-mythical Great Calamity) might be, but that didn’t mean he was human. If that was the case, then his inability to communicate like a normal person might simply be a result of a cultural difference.

It was ridiculous to think about a demon suffering from culture shock, but he’d seemed to be in genuine distress when he came to her apartment first as a monster and then as a man. She’d had her own experiences with culture shock in college, and it hadn’t been easy for her to adjust to the lab where she worked. She was still having trouble, if she was being honest with herself. Ganondorf wasn’t struggling to find words like he was when she’d last seen him, but his accent was still patchy, and he sometimes pronounced certain words as though he’d only encountered them in a book.

Not that any of this excused the fact that he was stalking and possibly even threatening her. Zelda remembered the advice Riju had given after her failed attempts at dating in college, namely, that you can’t expect other people to know what you want if you don’t tell them. You have to set boundaries, and the people who can’t be bothered to respect them aren’t worth your time.

Unfortunately for her, the situation she’d managed to find herself in was on an entirely different scale than an awkward date. The city was still trying to clean up the mysterious damage that occurred during the night Ganondorf appeared. It was on all her news feeds, and she didn’t need to be online to know about the endless delays in the subway schedule caused by the repairs. Thanks to whatever made one of the train tunnels collapse, she had to wake up almost half an hour earlier every morning. If Ganondorf was somehow connected to that “whatever,” the danger he posed was far greater than a surly attitude. He seemed urbane enough, but she was afraid she was walking on thin ice over deep and dangerous water.

“Listen,” she began, careful to keep her tone neutral, “I don’t know why you know my name or how you found your way to my apartment, but we don’t know each other. We’re not friends, and you can’t just come here whenever you like and act like I owe you something because you stole my password and checked my bank account without my permission. I’m trying to be kind, but you’re being creepy, and I’m not comfortable with whatever is going on here.”

Ganondorf didn’t seem offended by this accusation. He didn’t seem the slightest bit ashamed either. “It was an emergency, and you’re clearly struggling,” he responded, as if this were a perfectly reasonable observation.

“I understand that we have to meet in private, but you need to call first if you want to come here.”

“Fine.”

Fine? Zelda had expected more resistance. In her experience, it was rare for people to take her seriously once she had made her expectations clear. She waited for Ganondorf to get defensive, but he only nodded.

“I’ll call if I want to meet you. I tried to call you several times today, but you turned your phone off.”

“You could have called more than ten minutes before you showed up.”

“Your phone was off this morning as well, as well as most of yesterday. I sent you a message to call me, but you never read it, apparently. Is there some reason you turn your phone off?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“It’s a reasonable question.”

“It’s _personal_.”

“Forgive me for asking.”

Zelda was taken aback by his apology, but she frowned as he continued.

“I have no desire to pry into your private life, and I apologize for running a background check on you without your permission, but you have to understand that this is a delicate situation for me. I have no memory of who I am, and I haven’t been able to find any established identity associated with my name. I won’t trouble you with the details, but my livelihood isn’t strictly legal at the moment. I can’t afford to waste time figuring out what happened to me, and that includes playing phone tag with you.”

Zelda looked away from him. It still didn’t excuse the fact that he had stalked her and stolen her password, but Ganondorf was right. She knew she was guilty of turning off her phone as a way of avoiding unpleasant situations. She also knew how much it annoyed people, but Ganondorf was the first person to say something. Still, just because it was true didn’t mean she wanted to hear it from him.

“Fine. But I don’t want to meet you every day.”

“The feeling is mutual, but let’s not dwell on it. What schedule would you like to set?”

What schedule would she like to set? Ganondorf’s Hylian was still a little strange, and she wasn’t sure what he meant, especially since he hadn’t taken out his phone to check his calendar. He could mean a number of different things, but it would be awkward to ask. Between the two of them, Zelda thought, it was a wonder they were able to communicate at all.

“I can’t say until I know what this entails,” she said. “If you have enough time to come to my apartment, then you must not be busy. Why don’t we start with this magic… thing… right now?”

“With pleasure. But first I’m going to make tea, and you’re going to accept the transfer.”

Zelda grimaced. Who did this man think he was? _Boundaries_ , she reminded herself.

“I appreciate the offer, but I’m still uncomfortable accepting money from you. You’re trying to exert your dominance over me.”

“With that amount of money? Hardly.” Ganondorf sneered. “I would never do something so crude.”

Zelda could tell she’d insulted him, but she wasn’t ready to let the matter drop.

“Whether you intended to or not, that’s what you’re doing.”

“Is it?” Ganondorf stood and smoothed the creases from his pants before walking to the kitchen. “How about this – it’s not my money. I skimmed it from the account of a client by failing to report a fractional gain on a significant sum during an infinitesimal period of time. It’s the sort of thing no one would ever know about or even think to look for. Unless you were to tell them, of course.”

After unbuttoning his cuffs and rolling up his sleeves, Ganondorf took out his phone and made a rapid series of taps on the screen. “I’ve sent you a link to the portfolio. It contains the contact information of the client’s representative on the first page. Speak to them if you wish. It makes no difference to me, but perhaps that will help balance the scales of power in your mind.”

Zelda considered his words as he turned on the faucet and filled the kettle. He removed the pot from the dish rack and put a spoonful of loose tea into the strainer. It was uncanny to watch him act as if he already knew his way around her kitchen. How did he know where everything was? It must not have been her imagination that he’d cleaned up after himself when she’d made him breakfast, then. But how could he remember the details of where she kept her tea and silverware? What sort of person possessed that level of recall? For that matter, how had he learned Hylian so quickly?

As Zelda watched Ganondorf make tea in her kitchen, she waited for him to do something that would reveal that he was something other than a normal Gerudo man. He moved with a surprising amount of grace, especially given that the small room wasn’t designed for someone of his size, but there wasn’t anything particularly demonic about him.

“That’s not how this works,” she finally said, picking the conversation back up where they had left it. “The only thing you’ve done is to make me complicit in a crime you committed. That puts me even more in your power, and you know it.”

“If you insist on seeing it that way, I won’t argue,” he replied, taking the kettle off the stove before the water boiled. “You’ll just have to become more powerful than I am, won’t you?”

Zelda listened for the voice she’d heard earlier, the whisper that told her something was coming, but she only thing she could hear was the sound of Ganondorf pouring water over the tea leaves. She was alone, and she had no one to rely on except herself. Still, if the man in her kitchen was real, then what she’d seen as a child in the hospital must be real as well. If that was the case, then Zelda could handle Ganondorf. After all, she’d faced much more terrifying monsters than he could ever hope to be.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ganondorf gives Zelda her first magic lesson.

“Magic is something that everyone can do to a certain extent, like drawing or playing an instrument. Most children start with a few small exercises, but only a few people bother to move beyond that. No matter how much natural talent someone might have, magic requires patience and training. Unless someone takes the time to develop their ability, it fades with disuse as they become accustomed to moving through the world without it.”

Ganondorf had no memory of how he had come by his own skills, and he certainly didn’t have any recollection of being taught by anyone. He didn’t know how he knew what he told her, but the explanation came to him naturally.

“I’m not sure I understand,” Zelda replied. “If magical ability is something that everyone has, how is it possible that no one knows about it?”

It was a fair question. Ganondorf had asked himself the very same thing multiple times. He’d developed several theories, none of them pleasant. Unless Zelda pressed him for details, he thought it best not to dwell on the subject.

“It might be akin to having the ability to program software if there are no computers,” he answered. “You would never have any reason to know it was something you were capable of. You’d find another outlet for your talent, like engineering or architecture.”

“But magic isn’t like math. Wouldn’t it manifest itself in some way? Wouldn’t other people notice?”

“It would, and it would be noticed,” he confirmed. If Zelda had arrived at the same conclusion, he may as well voice his own suspicion. “I can only assume that the children who demonstrate natural magical ability are silenced in some way. They may be encouraged to forget what they’ve done, or they could simply be made to disappear.” He refrained from mentioning the Sheikah, but Zelda could draw her own conclusions.

“That’s crazy.”

“Are you crazy for having seen evidence of magic with your own eyes?”

Zelda seemed distressed. “I don’t know.”

“I can assure you that at least one of us is sane.”

“That means a lot, coming the person who hacked my account and stalked me to my apartment.”

Ganondorf was troubled by Zelda’s transparent attempt to change the subject. “You don’t seem to know who you are or what you’re capable of.”

Zelda gave him a sharp look. “Why would you say something like that?” she asked, the pitch of her voice rising. She was obviously upset, but he had no idea why her attitude had shifted so suddenly. It seemed that she was sensitive about the subject of her own sanity, but that made no logical sense. Based on what little he knew of her, she was nothing if not practical. It was possible that someone had managed to convince her that her ability wasn’t real, but she was far too clever to fall prey to such a simple mind game. He remembered what he had sensed when he forged a channel into her magic, that she was hiding something from him that she didn’t fully understand herself. Whatever she was trying to conceal was more than likely connected to what she had done to him, but that wasn’t his priority at the moment.

“Drink your tea and calm down.”

“Don’t use that tone of voice with me.”

“You’re stalling by raising petty objections.”

“This isn’t a petty objection. I appreciate that you’re trying to explain something to me, but I refuse to be patronized.”

“I’m not – ” he began, but he cut himself off. It would do no good to argue with her.

He would have to be more careful if he wanted to convince her to lower her guard. Intimidation wouldn’t work, nor would the assertion of his authority. It would be much more effective to persuade her to become his ally if she felt that she was making the decision of her own accord. Like Link, she noticed things most people would take for granted or dismiss as unimportant, so it would probably be most effective to tell her the truth.

“Let me assure you that I have no wish to patronize you,” he began again. “I’m simply frustrated by your ignorance, however unintentional it might be. Your magic places you in grave danger. You must know this on some level, otherwise you wouldn’t have isolated yourself.”

“I haven’t isolated myself,” Zelda objected. Ganondorf saw no reason to respond to such a self-evident lie.

He cleared his throat. “My association with you puts me in danger too. This neighborhood is crawling with Sheikah, and I wouldn’t have risked attracting their attention if I didn’t feel that it was necessary to contact you.”

He hoped he had exposed enough of his own vulnerability to satisfy her. Judging by Zelda’s face, she seemed to be taking the situation more seriously. Good. She did not like to be spoken to with disrespect, but neither did he.

“Have some tea, and I’ll listen to what you have to say when I’m finished talking.”

He raised his own cup and took a sip. Zelda glared at him but followed suit. The tea was still hot, and he’d managed to brew it well despite its poor quality. Most people in this goddess-forsaken city let their tea steep until it was as bitter as coffee. If he taught this woman nothing else, he could at least ensure that she learned to make tea correctly.

“Even with training, most people only have enough magic to perform simple tasks,” he said. “Household chores, really. Finding lost keys, helping a plant grow, summoning small objects from a distance. Forcing a car battery to start after you’ve left the headlights on, cleaning a stain off your shirt, healing a paper cut, that sort of thing. Most people will never be able to affect the larger world. Even with a substantial education, almost no one is capable of the sort of fireworks display you see on…”

Ganondorf trailed off, unsure of how to describe the nonsense he would occasionally see in advertisements for movies. He had no interest in such things, which struck him as an egregious waste of time. Fantasy seemed especially ridiculous to him. If everyone had the power to launch a fireball by chanting a string of nonsense words, society would never have emerged from the dark ages.

“So you’re saying that what you see on television isn’t real,” Zelda said with a smirk. Ganondorf suppressed a scowl. He knew that she was making fun of him, but he didn’t understand the joke and didn’t particularly care.

“Yes, but you’re different,” he told her. “If other people twinkle like stars, you are the sun. The probability that your power hasn’t manifested is close to zero. Whatever happened to me might be a result of something you’ve done without knowing, which means you may be on the verge of another manifestation. When that occurs, as I’m sure it will, whatever happened to the other people in Hyrule who have demonstrated magical ability will happen to you. You may be imprisoned or silenced in another way. This may have already happened to you in the past, though you may not remember it.”

Zelda didn’t respond. She looked out into the garden with a thoughtful expression on her face, and Ganondorf knew that his suspicions were correct.

“Tell me, Zelda, does this truly sound ‘crazy’ to you?”

“I always thought I was making things up,” she said softly, still not meeting his eyes.

“I can assure you that you’re not.”

“So what do you get out of this?”

“Aside from regaining my memory?”

“Aside from that. No offense, but someone who’s willing to pay someone else’s rent must have other means of solving problems.”

“I will protect you in order to protect myself. Our interests are aligned. I suggest you take advantage of what I’m offering. Accept the transfer.”

“I intend to.”

Ganondorf watched as she drank the rest of her tea before responding. “You said you wanted me to teach you how to use your abilities. That benefits me as well, but I need to be able to reach you. I’ll call before I come, but only if you haven’t turned off your phone.”

“Fine,” she said, and an expression that Ganondorf couldn’t read briefly surfaced on her face before disappearing. “Let’s start now. What happens next?”

“A child would be given simple exercises and taught to discover their magic gradually, but our time is limited and we have no room for mistakes. Before anything, you need to understand how to access your power. I tapped into the flow of your magic in order to take control of it earlier. I will do the same thing again, but this time I’d like you to control it.”

“How exactly do you ‘tap into’ me?” Zelda’s smirk returned, but Ganondorf no longer cared. It was of no consequence to him if she amused herself with private jokes at his expense.

“You will learn the theory behind how this works in time, but for now it’s easier to show you. Are you ready?”

“Yes.” Zelda offered her hand to him with no hesitation. As he took it, Ganondorf remembered the delicate touch of her fingers on his face. He quickly cleared his mind. She would have as much access to him as he would have to her. Even if she didn’t yet understand how to read him, he wanted there to be no chance of her knowing how she had affected him.

He opened a channel between them, and he could sense her attuning herself to him. He allowed her to grow comfortable with her awareness of the energy passing through her, which ebbed and flowed with her breath.

“How does it feel?” he asked.

“I don’t know how to put it… It’s like I can do anything.”

“That might be somewhat ambitious. You can start by summoning light, just as you did earlier.”

“You did that.”

 _That was entirely you_ , he thought, and she smiled in response.

Zelda extended her free hand and uncurled her fingers. Ganondorf could feel the warmth gathering on her palm, and he sent out a spark that she could use to light a flame. She caught it with ease and kindled it into a globe of light, which floating a few inches above her hand. It was small and flickering at first, but it grew stronger as he fueled it with his own magic. When he was confident that Zelda would be able to maintain it by herself, he withdrew his hand from hers. The light remained, gentle but brilliant.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, and indeed it was. Ganondorf felt Zelda’s wonder through their bond. In a dark corner of his mind, he thought that it would bring him no small amount of pleasure to kill whoever had forced her to remain ignorant of her own talent. Although she didn’t yet know it, her power was incredible, and such power should not be wasted.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Zelda receives a not entirely unexpected visit.

Zelda sat alone in her apartment surrounded by small globes of light. The ward covering the walls around her shimmered like the inside of a pearl.

One of the first things Ganondorf taught her was to cast a ward to render her magic unobservable and undetectable. He’d prefaced his demonstration by informing her that the spell was fairly advanced and might take some time to perform on her own, but he seemed pleased when she mastered it quickly and without any complications. He was insufferable, but she had to give him credit – he was never bitter or envious when she was able to do something that was supposed to be difficult.

Aside from Riju, who was blessed with such a wealth of confidence that she’d probably never been jealous of anyone in her life, people tended to resent Zelda’s intelligence. She’d learned to keep her talents to herself, and she’d mastered the art of being quiet even when she could easily solve a problem or point out something that had been overlooked. Ganondorf saw through this pretense immediately and had no patience for it. He called her out on her behavior whenever she pretended to have trouble with something, so she dropped the act and began to speak to him as an equal. She was convinced that he was using her for his own purposes, but he enabled her to learn at her own pace and never forced her to hold herself back.

The way he opened her awareness of magic when he started teaching her was one of the most exhilarating things she’d ever experienced. After the first two times, he never offered to do it again, and he never brought it up. She suspected that what he had done was extravagantly intimate. How could it not be, to be so closely connected with someone that you shared their breath and mind? She remembered the uncanny sensation of touching her own hand with his fingers and feeling the tension in his muscles as he perched on the table in front of her couch, where she sat facing him and looking at herself at the same time. She couldn’t forget the incredible sense of potential that had flooded into her while she was connected to him. To have access to that amount of power… There were many things she found strange about Ganondorf, but that was among the most troubling. Who could he have been before he appeared at the door of her apartment? She still doubted whether he _was_ human, but what were the implications if someone like him was human? It seemed impossible, but the boundaries of what she considered within the realm of possibility were expanding with each passing day.

Ganondorf was true to his word and contacted her before he visited her apartment. It took him no time at all to appear after he called. Zelda was worried that he was still stalking her until she realized that he couldn’t possibly be, not unless he was somehow able to alter the location of his GPS when he called. She wouldn’t put it past him, but it seemed far more likely that he traveled using a method that he hadn’t revealed to her yet, and she was guessing that it had nothing to do with public transportation.

He came every two or three days, but he rarely stayed for more than an hour. He told her only what he wanted her to know and showed her only what he felt confident that she could practice on her own. He never talked about himself, and she sometimes found herself wondering what he did during the day. Judging by his wardrobe, he had a job with a substantially higher salary than hers. She’d deleted the message he sent her with information about his client without giving the matter too much thought, but she noticed that his email address belonged to one of the downtown investment firms. She tried searching for him on Navi, but the only traces of him she could find were on Link’s feed on Skyloft. She remembered him saying something about his work not being entirely legal, so it was probably best not to know.

Like Riju, Ganondorf insisted on beginning any conversation with tea. It was a quaint ritual, and she’d come to look forward to it. She’d started to order tea from Beedlenet. Link would deliver it to her at work, and he would always remark on how happy and healthy she looked. She considered asking him about Ganondorf, thinking that perhaps they were dating. By the time she finally worked up the courage to say something, Link announced that he had a new boyfriend, a Zora with the old-fashioned name of Sidon. Link wouldn’t shut up about him but hadn’t yet suggested that she meet him. They must still be at an awkward stage of their relationship, so Zelda decided to put off asking about how he knew Ganondorf until he was more comfortable with the person he was currently dating.

Riju was back home in Lanayru and still texting her multiple times a day, but she’d stopped bothering her about coming for a visit. Zelda knew she was planning something, but there was nothing she could do to stop her. The matter was out of her hands, so she figured she might as well enjoy the calm before the storm.

Zelda had to admit to herself that she was happy for the first time in a long time. She still hated her job and felt embarrassed by her apartment, but her days had a comforting routine. Now that she knew she wasn’t crazy, she was more comfortable trusting her feelings and intuition. The diary she’d started keeping after she stopped taking her medication had transformed into a set of research notes on magic.

She was making steady progress with spellcasting and gradually learning to account for a range of variables. At the moment she was challenging herself to see how many spheres of light she could keep afloat. As far as she could tell, there didn’t seem to be any upper limit. Ganondorf said that most people didn’t have the patience for magic. Was this supposed to be difficult?

Zelda’s concentration was interrupted by a knock at the door. Her first thought was that it couldn’t possibly be Ganondorf. He never visited without contacting her, and he never came twice in one evening. He was meticulous to a fault, and it would be unlike him to leave something behind in her apartment. He also hadn’t given her any indication that he enjoyed her company. Still, who else could it be? Just to be safe, she dispersed her magic and dispelled the ward before answering the door.

The person on the other side of the threshold wasn’t Ganondorf.

It was Impa.

Zelda’s heart stopped, but she stepped aside for her father’s aide out of habit.

Impa gestured for Zelda to move away and then closed the door after herself, pausing to make sure it was locked. She met Zelda’s eyes and clicked her tongue before pointing at a ball of light that still lingered in a corner of the room.

Zelda struggled to breathe, but Impa smiled and patted her arm. “Leave it there,” she said. “I’d like to take a closer look.” She walked across the room with long strides, her bootheels ringing out against the bare floor like drumbeats.

“You did a good job with this. It’s perfectly round, and it doesn’t flicker or give off heat,” she observed. “How long have you been practicing?”

“You know magic too?” Zelda blurted.

“Magic? What an uncouth expression. The Sheikah perform thaumaturgy.”

Thaumaturgy? Zelda didn’t know how to respond. Impa poked at the ball of light, and Zelda felt a shiver race down her spine as it vanished.

Impa turned to face her. “I imagine you must have questions. Do you have any coffee?”

“What? No, I… Can I offer you tea?”

Impa gave her a strange look. “Since when did you start drinking tea? But I’ll take some, if you’re offering.”

Zelda walked to the kitchen in a trance, and Impa joined her.

“This place isn’t much to look at,” Impa remarked. “I thought that roommate of yours would set you up better than this.”

“My roommate?” Zelda stammered, afraid that Impa had somehow learned about Ganondorf.

“That Gerudo you’re so friendly with.”

Zelda’s breath caught in her throat before she realized that Impa must mean Riju.

“She’s not responsible for me” was all she could think to say.

“Don’t be absurd. She most certainly _is_ responsible for you, and she knows it.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Our boy stopped giving us reports.”

“Your boy?” Zelda felt her stomach sink.

“That lovely young man, you know, your father’s intern.”

“You mean – ” she hoped she didn’t mean – “Link?”

“That’s his name, yes. It was obvious he had something he didn’t want to tell us, so I thought I’d check up on you myself. Did Riju teach you how to cast a light spell, or was it your mother?”

“Excuse me?”

Impa must not know about Ganondorf, then. But Ganondorf did know about Link? As much as Zelda distrusted Ganondorf, she trusted Impa less. If she escaped from this conversation without being taken into custody, she’d have to find a way to communicate with him without being monitored. For the time being, she resolved not to mention him.

Impa shook her head. “And to think, after all the trouble we went through to seal your magic. I told your father that it was a bad idea to allow you to live on your own, but he wouldn’t listen to me.”

Impa was trying to bait her into getting upset, but she kept her face neutral. “What type of tea would you like?” she asked.

“Green, if you have it.”

She had plenty, in fact. She was partial to it herself, but she rarely made it because Ganondorf didn’t like it. He never said as much, but by now she knew him well enough to have a decent sense of his moods.

 _This isn’t the time to be thinking of him._ She silently cursed herself in frustration.

Or no, perhaps this was exactly the right time to think about him. If he were in this situation, he would get straight to the point and say what needed to be said without prevarication. She resented having to use him as a model for acceptable adult behavior – Hylia knows he wasn’t the most pleasant person to be around – but she decided to speak as she thought he would.

“Impa, why are you here? I’m not in contact with my father, and I have no desire to speak with him. If you’ve come as an intermediary, I’m afraid the trip is wasted.”

Impa didn’t look the slightest bit bothered by Zelda’s curt tone. “This isn’t about your father,” she replied. She stood in the doorway of the kitchen, blocking it with her body, and Zelda suddenly felt cornered and claustrophobic. Had she really thought she would be able to escape from her family? Had she ever truly believed that she would simply be allowed to leave?

Impa’s smile vanished from her face. “You’re Sheikah business now.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ganondorf meets Zelda’s father.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This illustration is by the mighty and powerful [@zikaualpha](https://twitter.com/zikaualpha)!

The district commissioner’s campaign party was on the top floor of a midtown skyscraper. The suite was bordered by floor-to-ceiling windows that rendered the space corporate and charmless. The city lights stained the night sky purple and orange, like a bruise that refused to heal.

Ganondorf had studied the commissioner’s page on Kaeporapedia until he could recite most of it, but he had no real desire to meet him. The man was a minor player at best, barely important enough to be used as a puppet by someone with real power. Ganondorf hadn’t asked to be invited to the event but merely informed one of the senior partners at the firm that he would be attending. The colleague he had designated as his escort was from old money, and he probably thought he was doing a Ganondorf a favor. He was, but not in the way he intended. Ganondorf’s goal for the evening was to introduce himself to one of the partners of a rival firm. There was no pressing need for him to leave his current job, but it wouldn’t be wise to remain with one employer for too long; he didn’t want anyone to start asking questions.

He kept a glass of whiskey at hand but drank sparingly. The acoustics of the room were awful, but he tolerated the raucous atmosphere of the evening with as much grace as he could muster. It took the better part of three hours before he was able to catch his quarry; but, once he did, the job he wanted was as good as his. Hard work and talent were important, but not nearly as much as being in the right place at the right time and knowing the right people.

Ganondorf stood in front of the wall of windows and looked out over the city as he allowed himself to take his first real drink of the evening. Hylian alcohol barely affected him, but he enjoyed the taste. As he drank, he fantasized about the lights on the horizon going dark. The land must have been beautiful once, but this city was a blight on the earth. He wondered what it would look like in ruins, its towers crumbling as vegetation reclaimed the asphalt and concrete. All it would take would be two days without maintenance for the pumps supporting the sewer system to be overwhelmed and shut down. The sea would rise to its proper place, and the roads would become rivers. In time, trees would overtake the sidewalks, and the animals that crept in the shadows of the streetlights would be able to walk in the sun. People could live freely in such a place, and they might even be happy.

“It’s a beautiful city, isn’t it?”

Ganondorf saw the reflection of the man standing next to him in the window and knew him immediately. The resemblance to Zelda was unmistakable.

“President Bosphoramus,” he said, summoning a smile to his face. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“Call me Rhoam, please.”

“Rhoam, then. Allow me to raise a toast to this city.”

“With pleasure.”

They clinked the rims of their glasses together and drank. Ganondorf allowed the ensuing silence to spool out, knowing that Rhoam would speak first. His patience was rewarded.

“This is the first time I’ve seen you at one of these gatherings.”

“I moved here only recently.”

“Your boss has been keen to introduce you to everyone.”

“With respect, he’s not my boss.”

“Not for much longer, I suspect.” Rhoam took another sip of his drink.

It occurred to Ganondorf that Rhoam’s resemblance to Zelda wasn’t just in his face. This man likely knew more than he let on, and he was dangerous. He was either fishing for information or attempting to confirm information already in his possession. Ganondorf could handle another minute or two of polite conversation, but it was time for him to leave. Zelda had never laid a trap for him because she believed she had no reason to, but Zelda was not the president of Hyrule.

 _But she so easily could be_ , he thought.

“A rolling stone gathers no moss,” Ganondorf said. It was as noncommittal of a reply as he could manage.

“‘Grow where you’re planted’ is what I was always told,” Rhoam responded. “But we’re not plants, are we, Ganondorf?”

Ganondorf wasn’t the least bit surprised that Rhoam already knew his name. He nodded and took a drink to conceal his irritation. Aside from his treatment of his daughter, he had no particular reason to feel antipathy for the man, but he found that he hated him. He hated the easy way he carried himself, and he hated that he was so willing to address a stranger as an equal despite the clear difference in their status. It was a type of condescension all the more insulting for its subtlety; it was as if Rhoam were saying, ‘We’re the same, you and I, except you are no one and I have everything, but it amuses me to pretend for a moment.’ Rhoam was a born politician, and there was no way this conversation would end without him getting the upper hand.

Ganondorf knew better than to prolong the engagement, but he couldn’t help himself. “It’s a lovely little garden you’ve got here,” he said, indicating the city beyond the window with a twist of his wrist. “Cozy.”

“I like to think so.” Ganondorf could see the reflection of Rhoam’s smile in the window. It seemed genuine, and it probably was.

That was the difference between people who merely craved positions of power and people who actually attained them. Ganondorf had met any number of people who believed that they were destined for greatness, but the majority of them were completely lacking in charisma. Ambition mattered, but so did convincing people to like you. Sharpness and bitterness stank of insecurity and a weakness of character. Meanwhile, the Rhoams of the world could afford to be kind. People who thought that hard work was the key to success would work themselves to the bone and achieve nothing; they would become petty tyrants who abused whatever small measure of authority they came to wield. Someone like Rhoam, who could approach a stranger and smile with easy sincerity, would climb far above them, and it would seem effortless.

Every stitch on the immaculate cuffs of Rhoam’s shirt betrayed his wealth and good breeding. His worth did not need to be proven to anyone. He wore his collar open, and his blazer was unbuttoned. There was no watch on his wrist, and there was no rectangle of a wallet or phone in the pockets of his slacks. He was above such things.

Ganondorf hated him, and he hated the way he looked at the city with a patronizing smile.

Rhoam wasn’t a bad person, probably. He more than likely had the best of intentions. He could no doubt provide an intelligent and logical justification for why the state he administered functioned in the way that it did. He would most certainly be happy to explain his rationale if someone were to ask.

Ganondorf cared nothing for politics or policy. Rhoam could have his authoritarian police state. He could have his Sheikah wolves prowling the streets, and he could have as many children stripped of their magic as he liked. It was none of Ganondorf’s concern. The world was larger than Hyrule, after all. The only thing keeping him here was Zelda and whatever secret she was hiding. Until he could extract the key to her magical ability, he would need to remain as inconspicuous as possible. He would bow to the king, and he would even kiss his ring if need be.

“I sometimes find myself wondering how large this city could grow,” Ganondorf remarked.

“I don’t see a need for it to be any bigger,” Rhoam replied amiably. “According to an old legend, it’s said that Hyrule was created by three goddesses who blessed its royal family with a sacred artifact. The kings and queens were bound to this land by their duty to protect it, and there was never any reason for them to leave. These days we’re bound more by zoning laws, of course.”

Rhoam laughed, and Ganondorf chuckled appreciatively while his mind raced. A sacred artifact that granted power to the ruling family? He found this notion oddly intriguing.

“Surely there are such legends where you’re from,” Rhoam invited, and Ganondorf smiled in feigned camaraderie.

“That’s a tale for another time. It was a pleasure to meet you, Rhoam, but you’ll have to excuse me. It appears that someone I’ve been wanting to speak with is on his way out. I’d like to catch him before he leaves, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. The pleasure is mine,” Rhoam said, clapping him on the arm. Ganondorf had to exert every ounce of his willpower not to flinch. After she’d offered her hand to him during what had become their first magic lesson, Zelda had not once attempted to touch him. She was so fastidiously self-contained that it was difficult for him to imagine her touching anyone. He thought of her sad apartment and the cheap clothing she wore, and he considered grabbing Rhoam’s arm and twisting it behind his back until he screamed.

Instead he simply smiled and nodded and set off in the direction of the foyer, setting his drink down on an empty table along the way. He no longer had any taste for alcohol. He paused to chat with a few people in case anyone was watching, but he couldn’t leave the building quickly enough. He hailed a cab as soon as he was outside. He rode for several blocks but cut the trip short. He was too restless to sit still, and fresh air would help him clear his mind.

He felt as if he’d narrowly escaped a trap. Hyrule was too small, too small by far. He would have to be more careful if he wanted to evade scrutiny. He was already standing on thin ice with Link, whom he’d ascertained was a Sheikah informant only a few weeks after he’d met him.

He left the cab in a conspicuously high-rent neighborhood. It was bustling during the day but almost deserted at this hour of the night. Trees emerged in gaps in the sidewalk, their broad leaves and branches healthy despite being severely pruned. Potted plants lined the steps leading to doors that had no bars or padlocks. A few of the townhouses had left their front windows open to let in the breeze. At the corner of the block was a postbox so clean it looked freshly polished, and it stood as straight and immaculate as a soldier in front of a storefront whose picture windows were uncovered by shutters. There were no cars parked against the curb and no trash clogging the storm drains. Sanidin Park wasn’t far away, and Ganondorf could hear the faint calls of the ducks on the water of its artificial lake. At times like this, deep in the quiet of the night, Hyrule was almost pleasant.

His thoughts turned to Zelda. It was high time for him to have a serious conversation with her, and he needed to inform her that he’d met her father. It would be uncomfortable, but he had to ask her why she left home. Something had happened to her, he was sure of it. If she couldn’t remember, there were ways to help her. Opening another connection between them would put him in an extremely vulnerable position, especially now that she had become more confident and assured in her magical proficiency, but she had already seen him at his worst. He had nothing to hide from her, and there was no need to go through the tedious motions of friendship. The hour or so he spent at her apartment every two or three days had gradually become one of the only times he could allow himself to relax. If he didn’t want to lose that sense of security, he would have to talk with her, the sooner the better.

He took out his phone, which was currently on its third SIM card. The device was completely generic, with no stored data or personal customization at all. He had no trouble remembering phone numbers, however, and it took him barely a second to call Zelda.

She didn’t pick up.

She’d stopped screening his calls, and it was improbable she would be out this late, especially not in the block of tenement housing where she lived. An uncomfortable weight settled into the pit of his stomach.

He stepped into the shadows of an alleyway between storefronts and stepped out in the unlit blackness of the stairwell of Zelda’s apartment building.

No one answered when he knocked on her door.

He banged his fist on the half-rotten wood in frustration. He’d spent so much time convincing her to trust him that he’d stopped paying attention to whether he trusted her. Hylia help him, he’d actually begun to look forward to seeing her. What if this had all been an elaborate trap? He’d assumed she had no motive to hurt him, but it had been foolish to lower his guard. What if she had been a Sheikah agent all along?

There was no light emerging from the crack at the bottom of the door, but the shadows cast by the ghostly fluorescent lights of the hallway were too shallow for him to use magic to cross over. He considered using less elegant means to force his way into Zelda’s apartment, but it would serve no purpose for him to sit waiting in the darkness for her to return. If he could trust her, it would be counterproductive to upend their relationship by invading her space without her permission.

If he couldn’t trust her, another day would hardly make a difference.

If she had betrayed him, then he would kill her, and nothing would stand in his way.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Zelda learns of a terrible prophecy.

“Darling! I can’t remember the last time I saw you. You look marvelous!”

Zelda couldn’t help but smile. “It’s good to see you too, Purah.”

Despite the odd circumstances, Zelda was genuinely pleased to see Purah. Impa was intense and inscrutable at the best of times, but her older sister Purah had always treated Zelda like a friend. As one of Hyrule’s foremost experts in Sheikah technology, Purah had been part of Zelda’s father’s cabinet for more than a decade, but to Zelda’s eyes she never seemed to age at all.

“Have you met my assistant, Symin?”

Purah stepped away from Zelda and gestured over a young man in Sheikah lab whites with broad shoulders and a trim beard covering his square jaw. He greeted her in a smooth and cultured voice, and Zelda shook his hand. His smile was sweet, but his grip was strong. It occurred to Zelda that she wouldn’t mind having an assistant like this of her own someday.

“Impa just sent me a message to let me know that you’ve been able to unseal your magic,” Purah said. Her grin was bright enough to illuminate a stadium, but her words put Zelda on edge. She came to the Sheikah lab with Impa directly from her apartment, and Impa hadn’t let her out of her sight for a second. When did she have time to send a message? There must have been other Sheikah outside the building, but why? Had Impa expected her to try to escape?

Zelda kept a polite smile on her face but didn’t respond to Purah’s comment.

“I knew this would happen sooner or later,” Purah continued. “I’m surprised it look as long as it did, if you don’t mind me being honest. Technically you were supposed to be seventeen when you began to practice thaumaturgy again. That’s what the stars said, anyway.”

Zelda didn’t know what to make of this statement. It was the sort of thing she expected to hear from her father, not from someone in a lab coat.

“Are you saying that there was sort of prophecy? In the stars? About me specifically?”

Purah’s grin widened. “But of course.”

“Just to be clear, are you talking about astrology?” Zelda asked. “Surely you don’t believe in that.”

Purah looked surprised. “You don’t?”

“Purah,” Impa interrupted them in a beleaguered tone.

“Now just a minute, don’t you ‘Purah’ me. Didn’t you tell her anything?”

“There will be time enough for that later. I brought her to you immediately so that you can confirm her status.”

“Couldn’t that wait until morning?”

“We can’t launch a formal investigation into the evidence that the cycle has started again unless we have proof.”

“What cycle?” Zelda asked. Purah and Impa glared at each other. Symin seemed as if he wanted to say something, but Purah gestured for him to be silent.

“Fine,” Purah said, shaking her head. “Zelda, can you perform a bit of thaumaturgy for me?”

Purah sighed and presented Zelda with an encouraging smile. After a moment, Impa’s face relaxed into a similar expression. The sisters were like night and day, but there was something almost comical in the close resemblance of their smiles. Zelda had always been a little afraid of Impa, but seeing her together with Purah set her at ease.

“I’d like to see too, if you don’t mind.” Symin wedged himself between Impa and Purah and presented her yet another gentle smile as he adjusted a pair of square-rimmed glasses several years out of style. Sweet Nayru, he was adorable.

 _Well, here goes_ , Zelda thought. She took a breath and summoned a small ball of light that she allowed to dissipate after a few seconds.

“That’s wonderful!” Purah cooed. “Could you do it again?” She tapped the outer rim of her canary red spectacles, and a series of neon blue characters flashed across the lenses.

“What are you wearing?” Zelda asked, unable to help herself. Whatever they were, she wanted a pair.

“It’s Sheikah tech, darling. Snap!” Purah beamed at her, laughed, and said, “You’re going to love it here!”

Purah’s words struck Zelda as ominous. Surely they didn’t mean to keep her here against her will. If Purah insisted that she stay, she wasn’t in a position to refuse her, and Impa had already made it sufficiently clear that there was no escaping Sheikah surveillance.

Zelda found herself wondering how Ganondorf would respond to Purah’s assumption that she would consent to remain in the lab. He never asked questions but demanded answers as if he were perfectly entitled to them. Zelda sometimes found this tendency of his frustrating, but it seemed to be exactly what the situation at hand called for.

“No one has told me where ‘here’ is,” she said, doing her best to mimic Ganondorf’s dry tone.

Purah made a sour face at Impa. “She’s right, little sister. Do I have the right ‘security clearance’ to tell her?” she asked, making air quotes with her fingers.

Impa didn’t acknowledge her sarcasm. “We’re in the Hateno Ancient Tech Lab. Dr. Purah is the Director.”

 _I’ve already gathered that much_ , Zelda wanted to respond. _You’re not telling me anything._

“I’d like to know why I’m here,” she said instead.

“If you can perform thaumaturgy, then you’re one of us,” Purah explained. “And to think, you have a solid background in science too. Imagine how exciting this is! I was afraid you’d major in law or some other useless thing in school, but you’re a fully trained researcher.”

“And?”

“And we’d like you to work with us, of course! We recently unearthed a cache of the most amazing artifacts under the site of the old castle, but barely anyone can make heads or tails of them. Not that we haven’t tried, of course, but there just aren’t enough of us left with any thaumaturgical ability.”

“Can’t everyone do magic? I mean, thaumaturgy?”

Purah raised her eyebrows. “Why would you think that?”

“I thought it was something that had to be sealed, like with the pills you gave me…?”

Purah’s grin returned to her face, and her eyes sparkled behind her glasses. “Now that’s an interesting history lesson, and just the other day I was – ”

“Purah.”

Purah waved her hand at Impa. “Okay, whatever. You can explain everything in the debriefing.”

Impa nodded. “Zelda, we need you to repeat your display of thaumaturgy for confirmation.”

It hadn’t gotten past Zelda that Impa hadn’t allowed Purah to address the matter of the medication she had been forced to take, and she didn’t appreciate being given orders by someone who was technically her father’s subordinate.

“Is that a request? Or a threat?”

Impa’s eyes narrowed.

Purah glanced between them. “Yikes, wow, okay,” she said. “Zelda, we’re on your side here.” She glanced at Impa, as if for confirmation. “Right?”

Zelda refused to let the matter rest. She was no longer the same child who did everything Impa said without question. She needed Impa to make her intentions clear, and she refused to cooperate until she knew whether she was being detained here as a hostage.

“Is it my side you’re on, or my father’s?”

“It is my wish to see you both on the same side.”

“How altruistic of you.”

“I don’t have the slightest interest in intervening into your family drama. The stakes are much larger than what your father may or may not think is best for you.”

“What stakes?”

“She really didn’t tell you, did she,” Purah broke in. “Impa, why are you always like this? Stop being so mysterious. None of this should be a secret to her.”

Zelda’s frustration was getting the better of her. “If no one tells me what’s going on, I’m going to call my father myself. What exactly is so urgent that you felt justified in suddenly showing up at my apartment and forcing me to come here with you? What are you afraid is going to happen?”

“The War of Burning Fields,” Impa said.

Zelda wasn’t sure what she expected to hear, but it wasn’t that. “Excuse me?”

“It’s not what everyone was led to believe it was. The Calamity was much worse than anything you can imagine. It was only barely contained, and we’re in danger of it happening again.”

“That’s impossible,” Zelda objected. “All of that happened more than two hundred years ago. The War of Burning Fields was a civil disturbance caused by a rogue group of Sheikah. They can’t possibly still be active. And besides, all of the weapons were decommissioned. This is basic history. I mean, you can go to a museum and see all the Divine Beasts. What exactly is in danger of happening again?”

Purah answered her this time. “The ancient Sheikah knew that they would have to communicate with future generations without the aid of a shared language, so they created star maps. They take some measure of skill to decipher – and we’re quite good at it, if I do say so myself – but the idea is that the positions of the constellations on the star map indicate the general time frame for the recurrence of the next cycle of the Calamity. It’s an early warning system, basically.”

Zelda frowned. “I still don’t follow. The Calamity was caused by the use of weapons of mass destruction that found their way into the hands of a terrorist group. I can understand if there’s some sort of deranged group of people running around and calling themselves the Yiga Clan, but how can the position of the stars possibly predict their behavior?”

Impa took a deep breath. “The Yiga were never anything more than a small cult. They were dangerous enough, but they weren’t a real threat to Hyrule. They could never have taken control of any of the Guardians, much less the Divine Beasts. Even if they did, there were enough thaumaturgical locks in place on the machines to ensure that they could not be appropriated by any unauthorized parties. The Yiga were allowed to exist solely for the purpose of becoming scapegoats. The true source of the Calamity was something far more powerful than even the most sophisticated Sheikah technology.”

This was an incredible revelation, but it still didn’t answer her question. “So what are you saying?” Zelda demanded.

“The seal put in place by the last princess cannot last forever,” Impa answered. “The time has come for that seal to be broken. When it does, as it surely will, Hyrule will be in grave danger.”

Zelda had a bad feeling about where this was going. “What do you mean? What danger?”

Impa met her eyes. “Ganon will return.”


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Zelda makes a confession to Ganondorf and receives one in return.

“So I’ve been thinking,” Zelda began, setting a cup of tea on the table in front of Ganondorf. “I’ve never seen you drive, and I can’t imagine you taking the train. How do you get here? You must use magic.”

Ganondorf didn’t answer. He’d been staring out into the yard since he arrived, and he’d barely spoken to her at all. The windows were pulled open to let in a breeze, but the outside air was still and heavy. The sky was overcast. The days were as long as they would ever be, and the sun was taking its sweet time setting. The hydrangea bush sprawling across the patchy grass extended its broad leaves upward in anticipation of the coming rain.

Ganondorf seemed distracted. It wasn’t like him to ignore her. Zelda put her tea down on the table and sat beside it. She wanted to let it cool down before she drank it. The humidity was oppressive. She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. She’d washed her face as soon as she got home from work, but her skin already felt sticky. Ganondorf had removed his tie along with his suit jacket and rolled his shirtsleeves to his elbows, but he didn’t look as if the heat bothered him. No matter how hot it got in the evening, he never seemed to sweat, and Zelda wondered how he could tolerate this sort of weather. She had always hated summer.

She let the silence spool out, but he didn’t acknowledge her or the tea she’d made for him. She decided to try to pick the conversation up again.

“Don’t tell me you have a driver.”

“I travel through the Twilight,” he said, still looking outside.

“Am I supposed to know what that means?”

“It’s a world parallel to our own.”

Zelda realized that he meant “the Twilight” as an actual place, but that was ridiculous. She was familiar with the story of the Twilight Princess – everyone was – but it was just an old romance. Or was it? At this point she didn’t know what to believe.

“I can’t tell if you’re joking,” she admitted.

He finally picked up his tea and tasted it, but his expression didn’t change. “I don’t know how much you already know.”

Zelda frowned. What a bizarre thing to say. It was never easy to tell what he was thinking, but he was being especially difficult today. She hadn’t expected him to drop by this afternoon, and she’d had a long night last night. After failing to get any real answers from Impa, she didn’t have patience for this sort of prevarication from Ganondorf.

“You’re in a foul mood. Tell me what’s going on,” she said.

“I met your father yesterday.”

If Zelda had been holding her tea, she would have dropped it. She hadn’t told Ganondorf who she was, but there was no way he wouldn’t have found out. Still, it was unnerving to heat him acknowledge that he knew.

“And?”

“He’s charming.”

Zelda winced. “You could say that.”

“You’re using a different surname.”

“How astute of you to notice. Any reason you’re brining this up now?”

“There’s no reason for you work a miserable job as a lab assistant at a second-rate company.”

“I never said it was miserable.”

“I’ve seen your bank account.”

Zelda felt her temper rising. “I thought we agreed you would stop stalking me. What were you doing palling around with my father?”

“He approached me.”

“He’s a politician, he does that. It’s the start of the campaign season. Is that where you met him, at a fundraiser? I thought you worked in finance, not politics.”

“I’d like to know where you met Link.”

“So you figured out that Link was working for my father.”

“I did.” Ganondorf turned to look at her. “Perhaps you have other friends you’d like to tell me about.”

A chill passed over Zelda’s skin. What was he getting at? “I’m allowed to have friends.”

“Do you have any friends who aren’t spies?”

This was getting ridiculous. Zelda crossed her arms over her chest. “Are you a spy too, then?”

Ganondorf’s entire body tensed, and a dark shadow passed over his face. Zelda wasn’t sure whether to hold her ground or move as far away from him as possible, but in the end her irritation with his pettiness won out over her sense of self-preservation.

“You’re being unreasonable, and this isn’t getting us anywhere. Why don’t you tell me what you’re so upset about?” she offered. “Did my father say something to you?”

His response took her by surprise.

“Where were you last night?”

“Last night?”

“I called you, but you didn’t pick up.”

“Is that it?” Despite herself, Zelda laughed. It was a relief to know that even Ganondorf could get his panties in a wad over a missed call. A second later, however, Zelda’s smile vanished as she realized the implications of his question.

He stood so suddenly that he knocked his mug of tea from the table onto the floor. Zelda got to her feet and felt the blood drain from her face as she watched him walk to the bookcase. The Sheikah slate that Purah had given her had been sitting on a shelf this entire time.

“This isn’t what you think,” she said.

Ganondorf grabbed the Sheikah Slate and marched back to her before slamming the device on the table with enough force to crack the cheap veneer of its polish. Her own cup of tea flew into the air from the force of the blow and shattered on the floor.

“Then tell me what this is,” Ganondorf demanded. “If my safety is compromised, Din help me, I’ll wipe your memory so clean that you won’t remember your own name.”

His voice was as smooth as silk. This alarmed her more than his earlier act of violence. She knew him well enough to understand that he would never lay a hand on her, but the extent of his magic was beyond her ability to comprehend. If he said he could and would do something, he meant it.

But she had faced the same implicit threat from Impa just last night, and she was tired.

“Do whatever you like,” she said. “It’s not as if anyone is concerned with _my_ safety. When you started teaching me magic, you must have been aware that it would make me a target of the Sheikah. My father’s aide came by the apartment last night, if you must know. She offered me a job in her sister’s laboratory. I said I’d think about it. I was practically abducted, and that’s all I _could_ say. It was a shock to learn that Link was working for my father, but I don’t think he is anymore. I haven’t talked with him yet. The Sheikah don’t seem to know about you, if that’s all you care about. But who knows? Maybe _you’ve_ been working for _them_. I wouldn’t put it past my father to use you as a pawn in some esoteric game he’s playing. How much are they paying you?”

Ganondorf scowled in distaste, which made her even angrier.

“Don’t think I haven’t considered it,” she shot at him. “Why else would you want to teach me magic? Because you have amnesia? That’s not a real thing. Who has amnesia? I mean, there’s obviously something wrong with you if you showed up at my apartment naked and speaking in tongues, but your damage isn’t my responsibility. How am I supposed to know you’re what you say you are?”

“I don’t see any reason to trust you with information about myself.”

“For Nayru’s sake, Ganondorf, the head of my father’s secret service barged into my apartment an hour before midnight and spirited me away to some secret facility in the Hateno suburbs to put the fear of Hylia into me. She didn’t induct me into the deep mysteries of whatever they’re doing out there. There wouldn’t have been time even if she wanted to.” Zelda knew she was rambling, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “The drive alone took more than an hour, so you can imagine how much sleep I got. There are a lot of things on my mind right now, and I’m not interested in you throwing a tantrum over me not picking up the phone, especially not after you ruined my table and spilled tea all over my floor.”

Ganondorf’s scowl deepened. “Your table is a piece of garbage,” he said. He snapped his fingers, and the crack in its surface disappeared. “Your floor isn’t much better,” he added. He snapped his fingers again, and the pieces of the broken glass vanished. Her cup reappeared on the table, whole and uncracked, alongside the mug he had knocked over earlier.

“When were you going to get around to teaching me how to do that?” Zelda asked, still irritated.

“After I teach you to make ice tea. It’s too hot inside this apartment.”

Zelda cleared her throat. “I think your theory about the Sheikah having done something to you has merit. I was going to tell you about what happened, but I haven’t had time to process it. And they weren’t exactly forthcoming with an explanation about what they wanted with me. They gave me some sort of artifact, or whatever that tablet is, but they didn’t tell me why. The Sheikah are like that, and my father does nothing to curb them. This is one of the things I wanted to get away from when I left home.”

Zelda made a frustrated gesture and sat down. To her immense surprise, Ganondorf sat beside her. He was very large, and the couch was uncomfortably small, but their proximity didn’t seem to bother him.

It occurred to her that he had never used his size to intimidate her. Riju used her stature to her advantage all the time, sometimes without intending to. Zelda thought of the cup Ganondorf had shattered. It was sturdily made, and she probably wouldn’t have been able to break it even if she tried. It must have taken a conscious effort on Ganondorf’s part in order for her not to be aware of his size and strength. At the moment, however, he was deep in thought and not paying attention to her at all. He was so close to her that she could smell his aftershave. She considered standing up, but sitting next to him like this wasn’t unpleasant.

“What does the tablet do?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “Purah – she’s the head of the research lab – just gave it to me and told me to see what I could do with it.”

“I assume you’ve already examined it.”

“It doesn’t do anything special, at least not as far as I can tell. The screen doesn’t even turn on.”

“Give it to me.”

Zelda didn’t feel like standing up to retrieve it from where it had fallen after he threw it. “What’s the magic word?” she asked, annoyed. If Ganondorf wanted it, he could get it himself.

He opened his palm, and the tablet blinked from where it lay on the floor into his hand.

“What magic word?”

Zelda closed her eyes. “Never mind. You wouldn’t know it.”

“Did you honestly expect me to say ‘please’?”

“I kind of did.”

“Please, Your Highness,” he said, already tapping the blank screen, “may I inspect the murder device your father’s secret police entrusted to your care? It’s impossibly ancient and powered by a magical battery that may well be unstable, but I’m sure there will be no consequences if I tamper with it.”

Zelda didn’t dignify his sarcasm with a response. There was no meanness in his voice, and he was already absorbed in whatever he was doing with the Sheikah Slate. She watched him examine the tablet. Despite having been thrown with enough force to break her table, it remained unchanged. Why had Ganondorf called it a murder device? Did he already know something about it? The Sheikah Slate looked small in his hands, and she was fascinated by the way he moved his fingers across its screen. It seemed as if he knew what he was doing.

Cyanic blue light flickered onto the screen, and a soft glow illuminated the hollows between the ridges of the tablet’s casing.

“It’s configured to respond to a specific magical signature,” he said. “It will only activate for the person who has been set as its user, which isn’t you, I’m afraid.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’m not sure I can explain.”

“Fair enough. Can you figure out how to make it work?”

“Give me a second.”

Ganondorf held the Sheikah Slate in front of him. He released it, but it didn’t fall. Instead, it floated serenely between his palms.

Zelda felt a charge in the air. It was like the need to sneeze, except it was inside her head and hands. Just when the sensation was starting to become unbearable, there was a quick burst of light like the flash of an old camera, which was followed by a phantom smell of burning paper that flared and disappeared within an instant.

As she watched, the glow of the screen and the lines of light on its casing shifted from cyan to magenta.

“There we go,” Ganondorf said softly. “It’s unlocked. Try it now.”

He offered it to her, and her skin tingled when she took it. Five icons dominated the screen, but none of them meant anything to her. She touched the tip of her finger to the one that resembled a snowflake. A hole in the casing clicked open with a neat and barely perceptible sound, and a hidden lens projected a geometric grid of ultraviolet lines onto the empty space in front of her. As she tried to make sense of what she was seeing, Zelda became aware of a vicious chill in the air.

“I’d cancel that if I were you,” Ganondorf suggested.

“How do I…” she began to ask, but then she knew; it was as if she had always known. She focused on her intention that the tablet’s current function be canceled, and it was.

“Should I try the other icons?” She hovered her finger over an icon that looked like a square. What could possibly be the harm in that?

“It depends. Trial and error would be the only way to find out.”

“What do you think this one does?”

“Nothing you want to happen in your apartment.”

“Would you care to be more specific?”

“I suspect it triggers some sort of explosive mechanism.”

Did he mean to say that it was a bomb? “Let me give this back to you,” Zelda said, passing the tablet to Ganondorf. The Sheikah Slate was worth a thorough investigation, to be sure, but why would Purah send her back to her apartment with something like this?

Ganondorf took it from her without comment and shut it down. The bright pink light shifted back to a soothing blue before fading.

“Why did they give you something so hazardous?” he asked.

Zelda, who had been wondering the same thing, responded with the answer that was beginning to take shape in her thoughts: “Ganon.”

“Yes?”

It took Zelda a moment to understand his response.

“No, I meant… Not you. Purah – that is to say, the Director of the Hateno Ancient Tech Lab – thinks Ganon is going to return. As in Ganon the monster, the demon that caused the Calamity.”

“And they think Ganon is me.”

“I’ve already said that I didn’t tell them anything about you.” Zelda paused. “But that’s an interesting conclusion for you to jump to. Tell me, is it you?”

“You’re implying that you think it’s me.”

Ganondorf’s voice had grown quiet and menacing, but Zelda decided to give him an honest answer. “I don’t know what to think.”

Ganondorf exhaled slowly. He bent forward to place the Sheikah Slate on the table and then leaned back, looking out into the garden as he tapped his fingers against the arm of the couch. “Why don’t you tell me again how you found me,” he said.

“I didn’t ‘find’ you. You came here on your own. We’ve been through this.”

“Not recently, and not when you weren’t accusing me of something. Tell me everything you remember.” He frowned and added, “Please.”

“I used to take this medication,” Zelda said, unsure of where to begin. “I had a lot of nightmares when I was young. Just, really…” She wasn’t sure how to describe what it had been like, but Ganondorf didn’t rush her. She paused to gather her thoughts and was able to continue after a moment. “The nightmares were horrible. It was like something terrible was going to happen, except it had already happened, and the fact that I knew it had happened meant that now something was coming for me. There would be a fire, or a flood, or a tornado, or a volcanic eruption, or _something_ , always something awful, and there were people dying all around me. And someone – or some _thing_ – was hunting me, but I couldn’t run away from it. I had to run from the disaster, but that I meant I was running toward whatever was waiting for me. It knew me, and it _hated_ me. No matter what I did, it would always be there, and sometimes I would even see it. I can’t…”

She had never told anyone about this; she would never have dared. She could feel her heart racing just on the edge of panic, but Ganondorf’s solid presence beside her was calming. In the eerie quiet preceding the storm brewing outside, she could hear him breathing, and the steady rhythm of his breath comforted her.

“Anyway, whatever else it was supposed to do, the medication stopped the dreams. I was happy to take it. I would have done anything, really. The nightmares felt real, more like memories than dreams. I would wake up and scream and scream and scream. When my parents finally took me to the hospital… I’m not sure why I was there for so long, but I wonder if maybe… I don’t know, I’m not sure what to say. Maybe it wasn’t… I don’t know.”

“Something happened to you, clearly. You don’t have to talk about it right now.”

Zelda nodded. “I stopped taking the medication when I cut off contact with my family, and the nightmares came back. I thought they were just stress dreams at first, but they were so real. It was like I wasn’t asleep at all, just somewhere else. I guess it was like watching a movie, except I was in the movie and watching myself at the same time. But these dreams were different than what I remember from when I was a child. I was still trying to escape, but I wasn’t running from anything. I was trapped in some sort of dark and enclosed space, and it was always unpleasant, like I was being swallowed by water, or running out of air in a sealed room, or having my limbs crushed from the pressure of the walls closing in on me. And the worst thing was that whatever used to hunt me through my nightmares was _in there with me_.”

Zelda shook her head. “Whatever the thing was, I could never see it clearly, and it was always different. But that’s what you looked like when you broke down the door to my apartment. Do you understand? You weren’t even remotely human, and your shape kept changing. You had so many arms, and legs, and other things I can’t name, and they were there or not there every time I blinked. You were covered in some sort of black slime that scorched whatever it touched, and your face was… You were wearing some sort of mask, but you didn’t have a face, only holes and wires. And teeth.”

“That’s disturbing,” Ganondorf remarked. There was no emotion in his voice, and Zelda felt ashamed.

“I thought I had finally gone crazy.”

“People don’t simply ‘go crazy.’”

“You know what I mean. I thought I was having some sort of episode, or that I was still dreaming.”

“Dreams don’t end with an actual person standing in your shower.”

“Like I said, I thought there was something seriously wrong with me. You know how this neighborhood is. Maybe you were a homeless person who found your way inside the building, and maybe I was so upset that I was hallucinating. It didn’t feel like a dream, but my nightmares have never felt like dreams. I don’t know… I guess I was just tired of feeling afraid.”

“So you left a homeless person in your apartment.”

“I keep telling you, I didn’t know if you were real. If you could see what you looked like then, you wouldn’t believe you were real either. I was already going to be late to work, and I didn’t want to lose my job because I was spending all morning dealing with something that probably only existed in my own head. And if you were just a homeless person, what damage could you possibly do? I mean, even if you wanted to steal something, it’s not like there’s anything here. I was sure you’d be gone by the time I got back.”

“I see.”

“I did my best to convince myself that nothing had happened, and it worked, more or less. There was no sign that anyone had been here when I got back. The door was unlocked, but it was back on its hinges. There were no splinters of wood on the floor, no black slime on the floor, no clumps of hair in the shower… Not even a wet towel on the back of a chair. Until you came back, I was sure I had just had a bad dream.”

“And you didn’t tell anyone.”

“Who was I supposed to tell about something like that?”

“I find it difficult to believe you don’t have friends.”

“That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“It’s complicated.”

“What about Link?”

“I can’t be sure at this point. I just learned that he was working for my father last night, and I haven’t seen him since then. Like I said, I don’t think he’s reporting to the Sheikah anymore, which might be why they came here themselves. Do you want to talk to him together?”

“I’ll think about it.”

Zelda knew that meant ‘yes,’ but she didn’t see any point in pushing him to admit it. Ganondorf steepled his fingers together and stared at a point beyond his fingertips. Zelda watched him but didn’t pressure him to speak. She couldn’t begin to imagine what he made of her story. A peal of thunder echoed outside. There was still light in the sky, but the rain couldn’t be more than a few minutes away.

“Why don’t you tell me what you remember?” she asked. His brusque manner had always discouraged her from asking him anything about himself, but now seemed as good a time as any.

It took him a few moments to answer. “I was asleep, I think,” he finally said. “I don’t remember anything before that. The first thing I can recall is hearing a voice. It was your voice; it was unmistakable. I woke up, and it was excruciating. I felt as though I were dying, over and over again. The pain was unbearable. I can’t remember what I did after that or how I got here, but I remember your voice, and I remember that I hated it. I hated you for waking me up, and I hated you for the pain, and I hated you for reasons I still don’t understand. I wanted to kill you.”

“Why didn’t you, then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you still want to kill me?”

“I hope I don’t strike you as someone who kills people.”

“You strike me as someone who wouldn’t hesitate to do what he feels he needs to, and you’re obviously using me for something.”

“You’re using me as well.”

“What, exactly, am I using you for? All you’ve done is create trouble for me.”

“Yet you continue to allow me to return to you. Even if you didn’t know Link was working for the Sheikah, you could have used him against me at any point.”

“Used him against me” was an odd turn of phrase, but Zelda had to admit that he had a point. He could easily kill her and disappear without a trace, but he didn’t; the worst he’d threatened was to erase her memory. Still, he could hurt her, and just because he hadn’t yet didn’t mean that he wouldn’t in the future. The best thing to do at this point would be for her to stand up and end this conversation. She didn’t know where Ganondorf went after he left her apartment, but she could use the rain as an excuse to ask him to leave. She prepared herself to do just that, but then she thought about how he had pressed her hand to his heart before he offered to teach her magic.

 _I exist_ , he’d said.

“I guess I was curious about who you were. The longer I know you, the more I feel as if I’ve always known you. As if I was meant to know you, somehow.”

Zelda didn’t realize this was true until she said it out loud. She looked away, embarrassed.

The silence hung heavy in the air, and Zelda was afraid. If her suspicion was correct, and if Ganondorf was connected to the monster that haunted her nightmares, what did that mean? What if he were Ganon, and what if he was destined to destroy Hyrule?

And what if she didn’t care?

This was a dangerous situation, and Zelda needed time to think. She should get up. She should say something, anything. She opened her mouth, waiting for words that didn’t come, and then she felt Ganondorf’s fingers on her cheek. He gently turned her to face him, and then he kissed her.

It felt like the most natural thing in the world. And hadn’t she always expected this, on some level? Hadn’t she wanted it? Hadn’t she imagined it when she lay awake late at night, excited and energized by her own power?

He broke the kiss and gazed at her, his strange golden eyes shining. She raised her hand over his and kissed him back, his lips warm and sweet against hers. When she closed her eyes, she could hear another peal of thunder outside, and then another.

In a distant part of her mind she was aware of the coming storm, but it could not reach her here.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ganondorf feels compelled to make his intentions clear.

“There’s not much of a story behind our relationship, I’m afraid,” Link explained. “Sidon offered diplomatic protection when I told him that I wanted to be released from service to the Sheikah, so I decided to accept his help.”

Ganondorf suspected Link wasn’t telling him the entire truth. A handsome prince coming to the rescue of a humble intern was a noble idea, but it was improbable. As much as everyone adored Link, that didn’t mean he didn’t work to make connections. Ganondorf was certain that Link had gone through an enormous amount of trouble to engineer a meeting that would look like mere chance. Regardless of how artificial their initial acquaintance may have been, however, Sidon’s affection for Link appeared to be genuine.

“You fly in high circles,” Ganondorf remarked.

“It’s true.” Link laughed, completely at ease. He had been forthcoming about his connection to Rhoam when Zelda asked, and he seemed relieved that the matter was finally out in the open. Zelda had been apprehensive about bringing up the issue, but it hadn’t taken her long to agree that it was impossible to have an awkward conversation with Link.

She walked a few paces behind him with Sidon at her side. Sidon and Zelda had apparently gone to the same private school, and she had been friendly with his older sister Mipha. Sidon was Link’s age, so he and Zelda hadn’t had many occasions to speak to each other in the past. They seemed to be enjoying themselves as they chatted. Zelda was never this easygoing when she was with him, and Ganondorf would have resented the way she smiled at Sidon if he weren’t absolutely certain of the Zora prince’s devotion to Link.

“I’d seen him around the parliamentary building, and I knew who he was, of course,” Link explained. “We finally got a chance to talk to each other when we met at a photography exhibition. He knew me from Skyloft, and he was enthusiastic about the photos I’ve been posting recently.”

“I can imagine he was,” Ganondorf said, and it was true. Link had a knack for venturing into places most people would avoid and catching details that most people would overlook. Ganondorf doubted that it was Link’s Skyloft feed that attracted Sidon, and he had a suspicion that Sidon had been observing Link for other reasons. He realized that he didn’t actually know that much about Link – or about Sidon, for that matter.

“Sidon seems to be enthusiastic about everything,” he said.

“It does seem that way, doesn’t it,” Link replied. “But you might be surprised. I don’t think it’s easy for him to be Mipha’s brother, and he’s only being like that with Zelda because she’s Mipha’s friend. I think he wants to make a good impression. There’s no need for you to be jealous.”

“I have no reason to be jealous of him.”

“Whatever you say. You’re clearly trying to listen to their conversation, but you haven’t looked at them once since we started walking. But that’s okay; you’ll like Sidon once you get to know him. Most people think he’s not that smart, but he has ways of getting things done. It was his idea for all of us to appear in public like this. Whatever is going on with Zelda, not even the Sheikah would risk offending Queen Mipha’s brother.”

“That’s why I consented to this.”

“See? There you go. I think you two would get along. I couldn’t care less about politics, you know that, but I’m glad we’re doing this. Someone needs to buy clothes for Zelda. I admire how she found the courage to cut off ties with her family, but she can’t keep wearing the same two outfits on rotation.”

“I have never agreed with you more.”

“Anyway, I had Purlo put together a wardrobe for her, and he’s promised to be discrete. Not that I believe him, of course.”

“Purlo couldn’t keep a secret if his life depended on it.”

Link nodded. “That’s exactly what I said to Sidon, but he thinks it would be good for Zelda to appear on social media. And I agree with him. I think one of the best ways for Zelda to protect herself is by making her presence known, especially if the Sheikah are interested in her.”

“You think it’s less likely for her to disappear if she has an audience watching her.”

“Exactly!” Link beamed up at him. “Sidon says that everyone used to call her ‘the princess’ in high school. She’s descended from the old royal family through her mother’s side, but I don’t think as many people know that as you might expect. The nickname was more about the way she carries herself, apparently.”

“I can see that.”

“I can see that you do.” Link laughed. “Isn’t it funny? A Link, a Zelda, and a Ganon. It must be fate.”

Ganondorf didn’t find the concept the least bit amusing, especially not after his most recent conversation with Zelda, but it was difficult to resist Link’s good humor. “You should invent a hashtag,” he said.

“I already have,” Link replied, grinning. “I just need to get the three of us in the same shot.”

. . . . .

Ganondorf frowned as he watched Sidon adjust the lapels of Zelda’s blazer. It was a relief to finally see her wearing an outfit that suited her, but he didn’t appreciate the way she had become the focus of Sidon’s attention.

Link could never have afforded this, and people in Sidon’s position tended to be cautious about ostentatious displays of charity. Sidon was more than likely planning something, and Link more than likely was as well. Ganondorf resolved to pay for the clothing himself before either of them could offer.

He didn’t understand what the pair of them had to gain from courting Zelda’s friendship. Link said he wanted nothing more to do with Hyrule’s political circles, and Ganondorf was inclined to believe him. Meanwhile, Sidon could easily have found more fertile connections to cultivate, especially since Zelda had gone through great pains to sever her ties with her family. Sidon and Link both seemed fond of Zelda, and they appeared to enjoy spending time with her. The way Sidon spoke and carried himself with an easy confidence that was entirely free from the oleaginous stickiness of a career politician. If he wanted to groom Zelda for a role in some political game, Ganondorf reasoned, there were much more effective ways to do so.

Sidon could be trying to charm his way into Link’s good graces, or he could just be friendly. Both were possibilities Ganondorf was willing to consider.

Purlo had swept Zelda through a whirlwind of clothing, all of which fit her perfectly. She objected to Link and Sidon’s insistence that she keep it, but Purlo silenced her, telling her that he’d have it delivered in a tone that brooked no argument. He’d ordered her to remain in the outfit she most favored, black slacks and a fitted white shirt with gold accents at the collar, which she wore under a blazer cut from light linen dyed a deep royal blue.

Purlo turned his attention to Link, presumably to give Zelda a moment to get used to her reflection in the mirror. To Ganondorf’s eyes, there was nothing unnatural about her appearance; it had been her cheap off-rack clothing that had been abnormal. She seemed more like herself now that she was finally dressed well, and she looked just as brilliant as he’d known she would.

Ganondorf gestured her over and asked her to turn around so that he could break the thread holding the tails of her blazer together.

“I’ll have this charged to my account,” he informed her.

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.”

“I’m not giving you a choice.”

She turned to look at him. “Why did you set this up?”

“I didn’t,” he replied. “This was all Link’s doing.”

“We thought this wild child would never settle down,” Purlo said to Sidon on the other side of the room as he clapped a hand on Link’s shoulder. “He must have half the boys in Hyrule following him. Leave it to him to reel in a catch like you.”

Leave it to him, indeed. Ganondorf noticed that Zelda hadn’t commented on his statement that Link had arranged this outing. She must take Link’s kindness for granted, just as he did. Just as Sidon seemed to, for that matter. The ability to find his way into the trust of even the most guarded people must have come in handy for a Sheikah agent.

Ganondorf could feel the weight of Zelda’s eyes on his face.

“You look like you have something to say,” she remarked.

Ganondorf wanted to ask her about her relationship with Link, but now wasn’t the time. “I don’t think Link has ever dated anyone,” he said instead.

“How would you know?”

“Just a hunch.”

“A hunch? Did you stalk him the way you stalked me?”

“I went through his feed on Skyloft when I first met him, yes. It seemed like a reasonable precaution.”

“Still, how would you know? Have you ever dated anyone?”

What a ridiculous thing to ask. “Not that I can remember,” he answered.

“Are we dating?”

Ganondorf was taken aback. Zelda always seemed so in control of herself, and it was odd to hear her ask such a vulnerable question. He didn’t know what she wanted to hear.

She apparently took his lack of a ready answer for censure. “Never mind, I can’t believe we’re having this conversation,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Forget I asked.”

Ganondorf watched Link make a show of flirting with Sidon for Purlo’s benefit. They seemed to be lost in their own world, and there was no danger of them overhearing his conversation with Zelda. “I want to make my intentions clear,” he said. “If you hadn’t asked me to leave last night, we would have done much more than ‘dating.’”

Zelda didn’t respond. He glanced down at her and was amused to see that her face had turned bright red. He was struck by an urge to kiss her ear, but he suppressed it.

He lowered his voice. “Let me take you home tonight.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Her eyes were fixed on Link, who had focused the bright beam of his smile on Sidon. “I’m not sure what’s going on with you, and I don’t want to drag Sidon and Mipha into any sort of drama. You need to understand that I’m not the sort of person to toy with if you intend to keep a low profile.”

 _Don’t insult me, woman_. Ganondorf clenched his teeth and bit back his response. How could she possibly think he was toying with her? She had enough magical ability to destroy him several times over if she chose to, and there would be little he could do to resist her if she ever realized the full potential of her power. She could kill him in the privacy of her own apartment, and no one would ever know. Her Sheikah contacts would make it seem as if he’d never existed, and Link would more than likely help her dispose of his body. How foolish did she think he was?

Ganondorf looked at her again and saw that her face had gone blank. Zelda only wore that expression when she was nervous. He realized that she may have only spoken out of a sense of insecurity. But why would _she_ be insecure? He heard her voice in his dreams and saw her face in his fantasies. At first, all he could think about was what she had done to him, but at some point he’d started thinking about what he wanted to do to her. He spent his evenings with her and no one else, and the best hours of his day belonged to her. His every instinct insisted that kissing her was a terrible mistake, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself. He had no clear understanding of his attraction to her; he only knew that he wanted her. She had the right of the situation – she was not someone to toy with, especially if he wanted to avoid the wrong sort of attention. He was completely in her power. How could she not know that?

Zelda cleared her throat. “Link may not have dated anyone before, but that doesn’t stop him from treating Sidon like he’s the center of the universe. Meanwhile, you haven’t so much as touched my hand all afternoon. I like you, but I’m not interested in being with someone who feels like our relationship needs to be a secret. I’ve been with people like that before, and it wasn’t pleasant.”

Ganondorf scowled. Last night she’d trusted him enough to tell him about her dreams and her childhood, yet now she accused him of being faithless. Whenever something happened that she didn’t have an explanation for, she always defaulted to treating him like her enemy. It was frustrating, but the friction of these misunderstandings only made him want her more. He was already half-hard from listening to the low and quiet voice she used to speak to him so that no one else in the room would hear. He wanted to pin her against the wall and kiss her until no one had any doubt about the nature of their relationship. He hadn’t touched her hand, indeed. He wanted to _possess_ her.

“I don’t think you’d even know how to be with a woman, anyway,” Zelda continued in a bitter voice. “You showed more affection to that ridiculous Sheikah Slate than I’ve ever seen you express toward an actual person.”

Ganondorf’s scowl deepened. “You seem to believe that I haven’t touched you because I regret what happened last night,” he said slowly. “You misunderstand. I’ve been thinking about you for months, ever since I woke up. Once I start touching you, I might not be able to stop.”

Zelda raised her eyebrows, and the color returned to her face. “I’ll believe that when it happens,” she said, the slightest trace of a smile playing at her lips.

Ganondorf touched his hand lightly to the small of her back and was delighted when a small shiver passed through her body. “Yes,” he assured her. “You will.”


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Zelda says something she immediately regrets.

Ganondorf didn’t say much in the cab, nor did he touch her. He paid the driver without consulting her and kept his distance as she led him to her apartment.

But when Zelda let him in and shut the door behind them, he wasted no time pulling her to him. She turned to him, and then his mouth was on hers, hot and demanding.

He was ravenous, pinning her against the closed door with the force of his ardor. “I’ve been waiting for this,” he breathed, his voice like velvet on her ear. Zelda inhaled sharply at the sensation.

She put a hand on his chest to push him back. “Can we get inside first?”

He kissed the pulse at her temple before lifting her from the ground and sweeping her into his arms. “Where inside?” he asked, smiling at her shocked expression.

“Put me down,” she ordered.

“With pleasure.” He began to walk to her bedroom, and she struck his arm with her fist.

“Take off your shoes,” she chided him. He kissed her forehead and hugged her closer to him as he stepped out of his shoes. “Not the bed,” she said, and he kissed her again as he carried her to the couch and sat down beside her.

She felt his eyes on her as she took off her own shoes and shrugging out of her blazer.

“Do you want tea?” she offered, looking for an opportunity to give herself a bit of breathing room.

“No,” he said. He tried to kiss her, and she leaned away.

This was all so sudden. It wasn’t as if she were completely innocent, but he was coming on too strong. He had only kissed for the first time yesterday, and she still didn’t know how to feel when he touched her; she still didn’t fully understand what he wanted from her.

Or rather, he had made it perfectly clear what he wanted. She would be lying if she said that she hadn’t imagined this scenario herself. She was only human, after all, and she found him extremely attractive. She’d even tried to flirt with him several times, but he ignored every attempt she made, and he’d never invited her to meet him outside her apartment before today.

“How long have you felt this way?” she asked.

“I can’t say,” he told her. “Probably since the second or third time I met you.”

“Why did you hide it, then?”

His answer was immediate. “I didn’t know if I could trust you.”

“But you knew you wanted this.”

“I didn’t know what I wanted.”

He was looking at her with an intensity that made it difficult for her to speak. She was used to being the focus of his attention, but not like this, not knowing what his hands and lips felt like on hers. She had envied the way Link looked at Sidon, but it was nothing like this. There was no playfulness or flirtation in Ganondorf’s gaze at all, and she was at a loss for how to respond to him. He reached forward and swept a strand of her hair behind her ear, and the gesture surprised her. How could he look at her like that and still be so gentle?

“But every time I thought about it,” he continued after a moment, “it was your face I saw.”

Did he mean what she thought he meant? Is this how adults were supposed to seduce each other? Zelda felt painfully inexperienced. She needed to reestablish control of the situation, or at least show him that she was capable of playing the same game.

“So you think about my face? What else do you think about?” she asked, hoping to pass it off as a joke.

“What do I think about?”

“Yes, when you, you know.”

It could have been Zelda’s imagination, but she could swear that his face colored at her question. Good. He had gone out of his way to make her blush when they were out with Link and Sidon. Let him see what it felt like for a change.

“The usual,” he answered.

“The usual?”

She didn’t know what sort of response she expected, but it wasn’t that. What did ‘the usual’ even mean? Was he joking? Was this flirting? Did he want her to be coy?

“That’s too bad.”

“Too bad for who?”

“Too bad for me. I was hoping for something more exciting.”

“Exciting?” His eyes seemed to glow as he considered her challenge. “Fine. Let me tell you what I think about.”

Were they doing this? Okay, they were doing this. Zelda swallowed. “You can start anytime.”

“I assume you’ll return the favor.” Ganondorf pulled her closer. She considered resisting him, but she was starting to enjoy herself.

“That wasn’t part of the deal.”

“It wasn’t? We’ll see about that.” He slid his hand into the open collar of her shirt and cupped her breast. Her breath caught at the sudden warmth of his fingers on her skin as he began stroking her peak with his thumb.

“You’re lying on this awful couch of yours,” he began.

“Leave my couch out of it.”

“It’s an awful couch.”

“Is it my couch you think about?”

In the briefest of moments, an expression that resembled trepidation crossed his face, but then he flashed his teeth in a wicked smile and continued.

“The window to the garden is open, and the moon is shining on is your bare skin. You’re touching yourself, but then you look up and see that I’m watching you. You’re shy, but you don’t stop. You stare straight into my eyes, inviting me to join you.”

Zelda felt heat gather between her thighs, but she refused to let him know that he’d affected her with something so openly smutty. “Is that it?” she taunted.

“That’s just the beginning.”

“What happens next?”

“I’ve gotten you off this couch and into your bedroom.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Oh, but you’re not happy about it, so I tie your wrists together with your own shirt. You twist and squirm and try to get away, but you can’t. I kneel in front of you and kiss you between your legs. You get wet so quickly it’s shameful, and nothing stops me from putting my fingers inside you, first one and then another. I begin to taste you with my tongue. You tell me that you hate it and then beg me not to stop.”

“I can’t imagine myself begging you for anything,” she told him.

“That may be, but that’s the last thing that matters to you when you come.”

“How do you know I’m not faking it?”

“You scream my name.”

“That’s ambitious.”

“Is it?” He lowered his hand and slipped his fingers between her legs. He began stroking her lightly on the outside of her slacks.

“You’re wet right now. I can feel it.”

She could feel it too. Nayru only knew what she thought she was doing, but she couldn’t help responding to the way he was touching her. And to know that he had fantasies like this, that he _wanted_ her like this, was undeniably arousing. She was starting to understand the game they were playing, and she began to feel more confident.

“You’re full of yourself. Is that the worst you’ve got?”

“I’m not done.”

“Then tell me more.”

“I’m sitting on the edge of your bed, and you’ve got your legs wrapped around me. You’re gorgeous, and watching you satisfy yourself as you grind against me makes me want to come, but it’s still too soon.”

He pressed his fingers into the cleft of her valley and used the pad of his thumb to draw tight circles around her clit, teasing her softly. His breaths grew heavy as he spoke into her ear in a low and languid growl.

“I turn you around so that I can touch you while I’m inside you. You’re watching yourself being pleasured in the mirror across from your bed. You’re embarrassed to see yourself like this, but your body knows what it wants. I can feel you getting tight around me. All you need is just a little more to push you over the edge, and I can give it to you, but only if you ask me to.”

He interrupted himself to kiss her. It was long and sweet, and she felt its heat gather as he caressed her. “Let me take you to bed,” he whispered. His fingers kept doing their dance, and Hylia help her, how was he so good at this?

Everyone she’d been with before had been awkward and clumsy, but Ganondorf touched her as if he knew exactly what she wanted and how she wanted it. Despite what he told her about not having dated anyone, he must have had practice. Her unease at the sudden intensity of Ganondorf’s affection returned, bringing with it a vague sense of wounded pride.

And if she let him carry her to her bedroom, what happened next?

She couldn’t imagine going on a date with him, much less introducing him to her family as her – what was he, exactly? It seemed ridiculous to call someone like him a boyfriend. Was he her teacher? Her lover? A stranger who’d broken into her apartment? And would the Sheikah learn about him? What if they already knew about him? What if they _had_ done something to him? What if her encounters with Ganondorf had been staged; what if he had been “given” to her in the same way she had been given the Sheikah Slate? What if he wasn’t even human?

Regardless, of all the doubts running through Zelda’s mind, nothing mattered as much as the fact that Ganondorf clearly had much more sexual experience than she did. How else would he be able to touch her like this, as if he knew the pleasure of her body as well as he knew his own? She’d always assumed that he was difficult and a little strange, but he was positively charming in front of Link and Sidon. What if he was like that with everyone except her? What if she was only the latest in a series of conquests?

“Stop,” she ordered, and he did. She pulled away from him and stood up. He let her, and she resented him; a part of her had wanted him to try to pull her back.

“Those are cute fantasies,” she said. “You must have rehearsed them. How many girls have you tried this trick on?”

“How many? None,” he responded. His eyes were wide with surprise when she moved away from him, but his expression hardened as he continued. “And it’s not a trick. I thought this is what you wanted.”

“Why in the world would you think I want to hear about how you touch yourself?”

“I almost never touch myself; I don’t find enough satisfaction in the act to finish.” A dark shadow crossed Ganondorf’s face, and suddenly his eyes seemed far away. She knew she should say something, but the inexplicable distance of his gaze frightened her.

“Are you happy, now that you know that?” he said after a moment, his eyes once again sharp and chillingly focused. “Let me tell you something else, if you’re so keen on knowing what I do with myself. I wasn’t lying when I said I haven’t been with anyone since I found myself in your apartment, and that includes any fantasies I might have. I don’t have time to waste on trivialities.”

Although she had pushed him away, Zelda was offended by his coldness. If he was attracted to her, couldn’t he have just asked her to dinner? If this wasn’t about sex, what did he want?

“Then why do you insist on pawing at me?” she demanded. “Why don’t you just leave me alone?”

“I keep asking myself the same question.” He took a deep breath. “I should leave,” he said.

 _That’s not how this is supposed to work_ , Zelda thought. “Then why did you come here?” she demanded.

“Damned if I know.”

Ganondorf got to his feet. She tried to resist the temptation to steal a glimpse at his waist and failed. She hadn’t been able to appreciate this while they were sitting down, but he was truly blessed by Din. What would it feel like to have him inside her?

“You don’t know anything about me,” Ganondorf said in a flat voice as he adjusted his pants and smoothed down the front of his shirt. “Don’t make asinine assumptions about how many people I’ve slept with, and don’t presume that you have any sort of claim over me.”

Zelda felt her eyes water. How _dare_ he say that to her?

“Don’t _you_ presume that I would even _want_ to claim some rejected Gerudo breeding stock.” The words were out of her mouth before she realized she was saying.

“Fuck you.”

 _Not like that’s ever going to happen_ , she wanted to counter, but she was too angry at him and disgusted with herself.

“Get out,” she told him.

He responded by shaking his head. His face was expressionless, but he slammed the door behind him as he left.


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ganondorf receives a call he can’t ignore at an inopportune moment. 
> 
> **Content warning:**  
>  This chapter opens with a description of Ganondorf, as a young teenager, being assaulted by a group of slightly older girls, presumably according to the orders of an adult. It is not clear whether this is a “real” memory, but it’s nevertheless traumatic. 
> 
> If you need to skip this chapter, the gist of it is that Ganondorf is grappling with his sexuality while alone in his apartment. After confronting his vulnerability, he begins to reclaim his agency. Right as he’s reaching a climactic moment, Zelda calls to apologize for what she’d said earlier that evening.

Ganondorf stepped out of the Twilight and into his apartment in a storm of bitter frustration. He was so hard it hurt. His groin throbbed with a dull ache, but the thought of touching himself made him sick.

The damned Hylian bitch was right, Demise curse her soul. “Gerudo breeding stock” indeed.

Ganondorf had no memory of who he might have been before he was pulled out of the darkness by Zelda’s hateful voice, but lightning-quick flashes of a different life came to him at moments of heightened emotion and arousal.

He had no way of knowing whether any of these visions were memories, or whether they were real in any meaningful sense. Zelda said that the visions she saw in her dreams felt tangible and immediate to her, but his were more like twisted fantasies, phantasmal and contradictory. He would see the same scene multiple times, but in different variations and from different perspectives.

He’d told Zelda that he didn’t find enough satisfaction at his own hands to climax, but that wasn’t the full truth. It wasn’t pleasure that eluded him, but his grasp on reality. When Zelda pushed him away, he caught a glimpse of something that wasn’t quite a memory; something he had seen before, but never in as much detail.

In her apartment he’d seen himself as a boy, muscular but as lithe as a lizard, just starting to grow the first patches of hair on his chin. He was physically strong and becoming stronger every day, but he wasn’t yet strong enough. He saw himself pushed down onto the stone floor of what must have been a stable. The smell of fresh hay was cloying, and the sun was shining directly in his eyes.

“Is it true, what they say about _voe_?”

A group of girls had surprised him as he hung a saddle to dry against a rough sandstone wall. Their leader sneered down at him. Her shadow fell over his body but didn’t reach his eyes. The sun was too bright, and he couldn’t make out her face.

The girls moved quickly and silently to pin him down and prevent him from rising. His mind instinctively reached for his magic, but it slipped from his grasp as one of the girls pushed a dagger into the fork of his legs.

“ _Voe_ are just animals, good for nothing but labor,” one of the girls commented.

“Let’s see if you’re worth the feed we give you, animal,” their leader said as she sliced away the leather cord at his fly.

In a brief moment of clarity before they descended on him, he knew he had to make a decision. He couldn’t physically overpower them without getting hurt, especially not with the cold blade of a dagger pressed between his legs. He could use magic to hurt them instead, and he wanted to, desperately. What was magic for if not to overcome weakness? But his thoughts were scattered and panicked, and the mental precision he needed was beyond him. There would be no warning these girls; if he used magic in his current state of mind, it would overpower him and more than likely result in their deaths.

In that instant he understood that he could and perhaps one day would use his power to kill, but he wasn’t yet ready to shoulder the responsibility of taking someone’s life. He knew that as well as he knew his own name; and, just as he knew his own name, he knew that this must be a test. It was unthinkable that a group of girls would come together and attack him like this simply to satiate their curiosity.

They must have been carefully selected. Not a single one of them would be so ignorant as to believe that he was defenseless, but they were loyal enough to whoever had ordered them to test him that they were willing to put themselves in danger. They would be mourned if they were lost, and he would be punished for his lack of control. Ganondorf’s last remaining hope of escape deserted him. He closed his eyes and submitted to their hands.

There were other tests, later.

He had seen almost nothing of his initiation into manhood, only that he did what was required, his traitorous cock stiffening under bored and unwilling fingers. He could not recall the details of how any of this came to pass, but neither could he deny the shame and humiliation of these visions.

His lust was a pathetic and miserable thing, tugging at the edges of his consciousness if it went too long without being addressed. He took himself in his own hands, but it brought no relief, only a gradual wilting. He desired men as he desired women, and he considered paying someone for their company – perhaps another Gerudo male like himself – but the thought of using someone else’s body as his own may have once been used was repellent.

He would have been content to bide his time and allow this aspect of himself to remain buried until it disappeared. Perhaps, when his memories returned, the issue might resolve itself. Until then, he had his hands full of more important matters than his own dick.

If only he didn’t have the damned _dreams_ , always involving that accursed woman. She was beautiful, to be sure. He wasn’t immune to her charms, but she was far from the only attractive person he knew, and his appreciation of bodies and faces was largely abstract. He found Zelda’s latent power fascinating, but there were many ways to investigate the source of her magic without any need to interact with her at all, much less sleep with her.

Her voice stirred something primal within him, something that had woken after what seemed like centuries of oblivion. He might be able to forget her if he stopped finding excuses to visit her, but he couldn’t force himself to stay away. He maintained a meticulous level of control over every aspect of his life, but he was powerless to curb the intensity of his desire for her.

She provoked him by insulting his virility, and he had foolishly responded by telling her about his dreams – but only ones he could describe with words. Others were savage, bestial; him pounding into her with such force that it seemed he would split her in half, her plunging her fingers into his hair as he sucked and bit the peaks of her breasts, him grazing her neck with the points of his teeth as he took her from behind, her squeezing his head between her trembling thighs as he fucked her with his tongue. There were other dreams he recalled in full detail but didn’t tell her – her binding his wrists together, asking him to kneel before her, leading him to the edge of release and making him beg. In his dreams, she expected him to dominate and worship her in turns, forcing him to negotiate a precarious balance with his hands and lips and cock, and he could never get enough of her. He would wake to a delirious burst of sensation as he finished, not entirely sure he wasn’t still asleep.

That was enough, usually, until today. He had allowed himself to touch her, to _want_ her, and every moment he spent with her was delicious and intoxicating. He’d had to step through the shadows between worlds immediately after leaving her in order to reach his apartment without embarrassing himself, and he’d thrown himself on his bed as soon as his door was shut behind him. He pulled himself out of his too-tight pants and spit on his palm, remembering the slick wetness between her thighs as he stroked himself. She’d gasped when he touched the smooth and perfect skin of her breast. Would she make the same sweet sound if he slipped his fingers below the band of her underwear? Her nipple had hardened almost instantly when he touched it, and what about the soft pearl of her clit? He imagined her flesh tightening for him as he caressed her, as she looked into his eyes and whispered his name –

But then he saw a young woman with hair as red as his own, the kohl on her eyes leaving a dark trail down the rouged skin of her face as she cried. She was dressed in the mellow gold and vibrant scarlet of a bride, but neither he nor she wanted what had to happen between them. He saw himself reach for her, his own hair pulled up and dressed with elaborate ornaments, but she refused to look at him.

Gerudo breeding stock, Zelda had called him. It was an absurd insult, spoken in anger and juvenile in its pettiness, intended only to hurt him. But what if she was right?

But she couldn’t be. The woman in bridal finery who turned away from him, and the group of girls who pushed him down – they all wore clothes so antiquated that they were like illustrations in an old book. And the dusty stable, and the stone walls, and the curl of the smoke of an incense burner – nothing like that existed in the world he knew. None of it could possibly be real. These were someone else’s memories, or entirely artificial to begin with, surely they must be. His body had no recollection of what his mind saw, and his visions never once showed him the voice and face that haunted his dreams.

Who was Zelda, and what was his connection with her? Why was she so important to him? Ganondorf understood that it was dangerous to be so fascinated by her, and he knew that it would be even more dangerous to sleep with her. If he could uncover what lay hidden within her, and if he could find the source of her power, he could use it to his advantage. It was entirely illogical to pursue her like this.

And he’d felt her pulling away from him as soon as he’d gotten her home. He was aware that she was overwhelmed, and he _knew_ she needed time, but he had been waiting to touch her for so long that he couldn’t stop himself until it was too late.

Even now, even after what she’d said and done, he could still taste her on his lips and feel her on his skin. He hated himself for being weak, and he hated himself for losing control, but from the bleak nihilism of that hatred came a desire that cast a radiance so bright he felt reborn. He was transformed into a new creature as he once again tightened his fist. The power he felt growing inside him made him dangerous, perhaps even evil. The pleasure he took from himself was not the submission of shame or defeat, but the certainty that he could and would become the master of his own body. He would leave these cursed visions behind him and emerge into the world to eat his fill of it.

What had happened to his mind was a mystery to him, but his body was his to manipulate, and the hands that set fire to his flesh were his own.

What if Zelda had been ready for him? What if she embraced him and allowed him to take her to bed? Would she have revealed herself to him, beautiful in her radiant skin? Would she touch him with her delicate fingers, grasp him as she might grasp the hilt of a sword, strong and sure? Would she guide him into her tight little slit, sweet and warm and wet, enclosing him in a silky soft darkness as he took her, as he _claimed_ her, as she kissed his neck and dug her nails into his back and clenched her gorgeous thighs around him as he buried himself inside her and thrust into her again, and again, and –

His phone vibrated on the floor next to him. He stilled his hand and took a deep breath, and then another.

It was Zelda. He had given her number a unique ringtone, one he hadn’t heard since he set it. She had never once called him; she barely returned his texts. Something must have happened. He cursed under his breath and took the call.

“Listen, I’m sorry,” she said with no preamble. “Can we talk?”

He didn’t respond. He couldn’t trust himself to speak, and he had no desire to talk with her on the phone.

“I don’t know what came over me, and I understand if – ” she began, but he cut her off.

“I have something I need to take care of first,” he told her, the words thick on his tongue, “but I’m coming over. Get ready.”


End file.
